


Dreaming in Binary

by blackSparrow



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Body Horror, Brainwashing, Copious Computer Speak, Helmsman, Helmsman Sollux Captor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rebel Leader!Karkat, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 06:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 51,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackSparrow/pseuds/blackSparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five sweeps after a powerful young psionic yellow-blood named Sollux Captor disappeared from his respiteblock, a certain violet-blood recruit boards the prestigious service of the Condesce's foremost battleship after taking out the )(eiress. That certain violet-blood proceeds to fuck everything up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0100001001100101001000000100100001100101011011000110110101110011011011010110000101101110

**Author's Note:**

> Exists in an AU without SGRUB.
> 
> This is an Erisol fic, but I'm not revealing what quadrant. It is also a helmsman fic, and it may be a bit confusing to those unfamiliar with that part of canon. This is the description from the comic:
> 
> "As for the Psiioniic, he was enlisted in a far worse, if more prestigious service. He was forced to serve as the Helmsman for Her Condescension's imperial battleship. Psychics of his kind were exploited for interstellar travel, and his abilities made her ship the fastest in the fleet by far. She grew so enamored of her Helmsman and his power, she would use her touch to extend his lifespan to match her own. Together they explored the stars for thousands of years."  
> -http://www.mspaintadventures.com/scratch.php?s=6&p=005960
> 
> That said, I am not a computer programmer, much less for alien biomechanics, so please correct me if I make any egregious errors in that regard.

Golden Paradox system log Imperial Sweep 110117109, prg 9 LS 4, Day 22, 23:17 hrs  
run: syscheck.exe [status_routine]

navigation: in flight (mode_interstellar, loctracking success)  
sensors: 100% functional  
life_support_sys: 86% capacity  
helmsman: biosigns stable, support systems 100% functional  
biotech: signalresponse good  
exterior: undamaged

syscheck complete.  
All systems normal.

compilereport: nav_calc_subroutine  
X: 586015, 8711152  
Y: 878186, 8789218  
Z: 111…

A warning flag flashes through your code, overriding your current task. 

WARNING: unauthorized crew member approaching helmsblock.

You abort the compilereport routine, looping it back so that it will restart when the warning is resolved. The line of code is imprinted into your system as soon as you conceive of it, too fast for any purely biological mind to process.

But then, you are something far superior to biology. You are no troll sitting at a console, subject to the caprices of what that category entails. You are the Golden Paradox, a Class A Warship of the Glorious Alternian Empire, a "being" of the loosest definition existing in the interconnection between coding and steel.

You pull up the data tied to the flag, flipping through the succession of feeds documenting the breach, just in time for another of your 612 cameras to trip the flag. While you monitor and process all camera feeds at all times, this is usually kept to a subroutine somewhere below what would be considered a conscious level on a biological organism. You shuffle priorities and dip your processing stream down into the applicable feed: camera 103 (hallway).

“…ound here are mostly for maintenance, newbie,” says one voice. Your personnel logs immediately pull up the applicable file based on the voice ID, and a point-by-point match of his facial structure confirms the identity. Compact frame, hair cropped short, straight horns, male.

ID T61156.  
Appellation Lt. Iopret  
Age 43  
Blood_class: teal  
StrSpec: whipkind  
Clearance: 4  
Access authorized. 

“Don’t let them catch a gungrunt in here alone,” T61156 continues, “or the captain will gut you with your own horns, violet blood or no.”

“Why show it to me, then?” The wavering accent is a second male, this one taller and slimmer. A seadweller with jagged horns. Voice ID on file; visual confirms. 

ID V33633.  
Appellation Prvt. Ampora  
Age 12  
Blood_class: violet  
StrSpec: riflekind (Special, nonregulation: Designation Ahab’s Crosshairs)  
Clearance: NEWRECRUIT  
ACCESS UNAUTHORIZED

Query: send warning to security terminal (y/n?)  
n [condition (presence crew member > 3 level clearance) returned yes]

This was all processed in a fraction of a second, so you are much better equipped to monitor the situation by the time T61156 begins his next sentence.

“Gotta know where the equipment and shit are, don’t you? Okay, so this here’ll be the helmsblock.”

T61156 steps up to the console outside the doors and types in the passcode. The visual is confirmed a moment later as the helmsblock door routine flickers through your coding, only noticeable among the constant hum of your system's other simultaneous routines because you were expecting it.

console activated: helmsblock doors (ext).  
retrieving passcode…  
passcode accepted.  
resolve command: open  
(door motor 0.2% slower than factory standard. log repair query)

T61156 steps through the open door, and V33633 follows. Camera 103 (hallway) loses visual, so you switch to camera 11 (helmsblock).

“Sol?”

“Hm? What was that newbie?” T61156 turns toward V33633. 

“Erm… nothin'. I… um…” An analysis of the feed detects a spike in V33633’s biosigns, logging a cessation of motion for 2.3 seconds, 60% increased vascular activity, respiration 140% logged normal rate, and skin pigmentation change from #C4C4C4 to #CECECE. It ticks enough triggers to categorize it as potential suspicious activity. More data is required before action can be taken.

“Ha ha!” T61156 says. His biosigns remain within expected parameters. “Oh, I see! This is your first time seeing a helmsman, isn’t it?”

V33033 executes a 120 degree clockwise turn to address T61156, eyes (#6A006A) widened 20%. 

“I… um. Yeah.”

“Ha! Don’t tell me the great Dualface is unnerved by a hunk of biomass!” 

“I really wish you people would stop callin' me that…” V33633 vocal volume decreases 4 decibels. His ocular attention turns 120 degrees counterclockwise to affix upon the bioform of the helmsman. 

Query: helmsman, visual anomalies detected?  
compiling data…  
uniform: regulation (helmsman)  
skin pigmentation (#DADADA)  
eyes: special (#F20000,#003BFF)  
bio-wiring attached (waist,back,arms,elbows,temples)  
visible psionic output low (mode: suspended_flight)  
data compiled  
no visual anomalies detected 

“And why not? Seems anyone else who slayed the )(eiress ought to be proud! Why else do you think a guppy like you was put on a battleship of this class?”

“I hoped you might appreciate me for my awesome shootin', to be honest.” V33633’s ocular focus continues to be the helmsman. You are tempted to run the query again, but nothing has changed in the past 12.4 seconds. Your helmsman’s biological shell remains suspended in the center of helmsblock by its biowires, just as it has since the moment your memory banks came online. 

“Ha!” T61156 executes a strike against V33633’s dorsal area. Analysis indicates that the strike falls under non-hostile parameters. “You’re a real riot, Ampora!”

“Right. That’s me.” V33633’s vocal frequency is lowered. He takes four steps toward the helmsman, and you prepare to activate antisabotage measures… namely the six plasma guns hidden in compartments around the helmsblock for such a case. The helmsman is a vital component of your system; without it, you can’t function, and the block is equipped with that in mind. “So is he in there, or what?”

“Is who… oh right.” T61156’s expression registers as confused, then amused. “Yeah, no. It’s not really a troll anymore.”

V33633’s eyes widen further (24%, (#6A006A)) as he turns the 120 degrees to T61156. “W…what does that mean?”

“What it sounds like, newbie. That’s not a troll. Seriously, don’t get your seadwelling pantaloons in a knot over it. I know it looks creepy, but it’s just hardware. Second-best in the fleet, sure, but still just hardware.”

“…but he…it… used to be a troll.”

“Who cares, man? It was a lowblood anyway. Woulda died in a couple short decades. This at least means it’s useful until it dies, right?”

“…right.”

“Now stop staring at it. We got the maintenance room next.” T61156 rotates 180 degrees and heads for the helmsblock doors. 

console activated: helmsblock doors (int).  
retrieving passcode…  
passcode accepted.  
resolve command: open  
(door motor 0.2% slower than factory standard. repair query already logged)  
WARNING: helmsblock doors cannot close. Reason: obstruction by crew member T61156  
suspend helmsblock_door_routine 

V33633 continues staring at the helmsman’s bioform for the 6.2 seconds it takes T61156 to prompt, “Newbie.”

“Comin'.” V33633 executes 180 degree rotation and commences forward motion. T61156 and V33033 exit the helmsblock. 

resume helmsblock_door_routine  
helmsblock doors: close. 

You stop monitoring the feed for Camera 11 (helmsblock), pushing it back under your high priority routines with the rest of the feeds. The potential threat gone, you abort the antisabotage prep and tuck it back into its proper place in your coding.

The loop from the compilereport you aborted earlier is still running in the background, but something stops you from re-accessing it. There is something unresolved about that trigger flag. Some sort of anomaly your system hasn’t yet parsed.

You dip into your recent memory banks and pull up the feed log for Camera 11 (helmsblock). 

Begin: analyze_feed[11 23:17–23:22]  
Analyzing…  
Analyzing…  
Analyzing…

The data streams through you, splitting and recombining in strings of binary that you pluck like a musical instrument. A frequency shift here, a change of pigmentation there, the feed comes apart at your touch, broken down into its most basic components in a symphony of ones and zeros. 

It’s not enough.

You can take it apart enough to know that there was something happening to analyze, but poring over every pixel of the feed reveals nothing that triggers any actual flags of substance. V33633 wasn’t exhibiting any qualities categorized in your files as those of a potential saboteur or spy, nor was either participant in the conversation exhibiting hostility or unauthorized behavior while on duty.

The only conclusion of substance you can reach is that V33633 exhibited a preoccupation with the helmsman. Reasons unknown. 

The anomalous behavior exhibits no danger to ship or crew. No hostility was detected. There is no reason to continue wasting hard drive space running unnecessary processes related to it.

You return the feed to its proper spot in your memory banks, and gather up the in-progress analysis process to abort and delete it.

You stop.

You pull the feed back out. Tag it, and tuck it back in.

That is as much as you can do with the data you have. Resolved, you close the entire process and clear the initial warning. 

The loop you started earlier closes.

resuming standard routines  
compilereport: nav_calc_subroutine  
X: 586861, 8711152  
Y: 878001, 8789218  
Z: 111571, 7571701…


	2. System: Be Distracted

At 12:27 hrs (mandatory sleep cycle for those not on the day shift), the command to open a sleeping compartment door flickers through your routines, efficiently executed and discarded between similar class commands (lights,doors,ventilation,water,power allocation) and the constant rotation of your active routines, like a thousand voices threading through your systems. They speak binary, and you are the master of drawing out each voice, interpreting it, and sending it on its way to make room for the next.

A flag activates. V33633 has left his compartment. A thread of data pulls up a previous log of anomalous behavior. The log is an unnecessary redundancy.

Your cameras monitor his passage through your corridors, just as they do all other active crew members (26 total, and G77522 fallen asleep in Storeroom B). Crew members not assigned to the day shift exhibit a tendency to wander during the day despite violation of regulation (data indicates 56% go to the ablution block, 11% to the ingestion block, 32% to another troll’s block, and 1% other). You added conditions to this function 3.7 sweeps ago to ensure that you did not cause unnecessary chaos on your deck by drafting a security log for every such minor infraction. 

Thus, the observation of V33633’s progress is relegated to the same subroutine as monitoring the rest of your camera feeds until such a time as a real flag is tripped. Your external security could use some updating, and quiet days are an excellent time to make some tweaks.

Another flag activates. Unauthorized access detected in a high-clearance area.

It’s V33633. He’s turning into the corridor heading to the helmsblock. You focus the nearest camera (103) on him, logging his hunched posture, unnecessary glances over his shoulder, and increased fidgeting of his hands. Analysis indicates these actions are classified as suspicious. You put your security alert routines on standby.

The code panel by the helmsblock door flickers across your attention, like the soft buzz of a bee’s wings.

Passcode failed. Access denied.

He presses a different set of numbers into the pad.

Passcode failed. Access denied.

Your audio sensors detect a short string of words from the troll. They are unimportant.

Passcode failed. Access denied.  
Passcode failed. Access denied.  
Access denied.  
Access denied.  
Access denied.

Data indicates that he is merely punching numbers randomly. His method is inefficient and…

…and stupid. Incomprehensibly stupid. You find yourself zooming the camera in a bit, in case there was some strand of comprehensibility to the recruit’s actions that their low resolution failed to render. No clarifying data presents itself.

After some minutes (4.3) of failing to guess your access code, V33633 steps back from the pad and strikes the door with his fist, then slumps against it in a pose your behavioral programing classifies as exhaustion. Then, he turns and glances directly at the camera, which, like most, is set in the junction between wall and ceiling. His eyes (#6A006A) blink up at 103’s lens for a few (5.6) seconds. 

“Come on, Sol. Just lemme in.”

He appears to be addressing… no, pleading with… the camera. He takes a few steps toward the camera, and you rotate it downward to follow him. This seems to encourage him, if the increase in his vascular rate is any indication.

“Please, Sol? I know you probably don't want to talk to me right now… not like anyone does these days… but for old times’ sake, maybe? Sol?” He pauses, his eyebrows crinkling. He leans to the left, then the right, and you follow him with the camera, increasingly unable to make the data coming through the feed fall into any understandable pattern of behavior.

He tilts his head, his brows low, then exhales sharply through his nose. “Look, I know what he said in there sounds bad, but you gotta give me a chance to explain. Come on. You owe me that much.”

A line of data coalesces, and you review it and come to the conclusion that he is attempting to address _you_. He does not have clearance to input commands, nor is he using any of the accepted commands. Doing so is without purpose.

V33633 runs a hand through his hair, his vitals reading as bordering on “agitated.” “Well fuck you too, Sol. Nice to see you haven’t changed much, even hooked up to a fuckin' ship!” He scowls up at the camera. “I’m goin' to get in there, one way or another.” With that, he turns and stalks down the hall. Possible threat subsiding, you cease the security subroutines.

You find your cameras lingering on him all the way back to his compartment, relegated to something just above a subroutine as you attempt to process what you just recorded. Somehow, even 20 gbps isn’t fast enough.

11111111111111111111111

He does it again the following day.

This time, he does not address the cameras, merely stands at the door poking at the code panel for a few minutes. Streams of “Access denied” chase one another through your logs. Then he huffs and turns to stalk back to his block.

The next day, it is the same, though he casts a narrow-eyed glare at the camera as he turns to leave.

It swiftly becomes a pattern for him. A routine, even. Every day, after a long night of duties and drills, he sneaks out of his block to attempt to get into the helmsblock.

His method is completely ineffectual and doomed to failure. You cannot infer why he would pursue this inefficient method day after day.

Yet he does.

You still cannot classify why.

11111111111111111111111

It bothers you.

It should not. You are not programmed with the need to understand what is going on within your decks; at least, no more than what is necessary to run at optimal functionality. Your external concerns are flight and navigation, and your internal concerns are security and maintenance. This is your function, and to venture beyond that is to divert resources and decrease overall efficiency.

And yet, you find yourself giving attention to camera feeds that are unremarkable beyond the fact that they allow you to continue to analyze V33633’s actions. You terminate this process whenever you detect it, but the fact that it initiates autonomously in the first place triggers multiple alarms across your system.

You have scanned your entire system for possible viruses 13 times and have detected nothing. Your databanks contain an inordinate amount of information about viruses for one of your class, so you must conclude this behavior is not caused by a virus.

He is currently running shooting drills with soldiers of similar rank, falling somewhere in the 60th percentile in accuracy and speed. Unexceptional on either end of the scale. You are disappointed to see that he’s not awful at it, because it seems like a person like him should be.

...That was an anomalous stream of data. And you are watching the feed again. You restore the priority setting of the feed to the level it should be at with a mental growl.

Wait, a growl? That classification is far too biological to apply to you.

You divert some processing power to run an analysis on yourself, intending to run the virus scan again, despite data showing that nothing has changed in your systems since the previous scan. This is obviously disrupting your functionality if it is making you run superfluous processes.

You decide to try running a less conventional scan on your system: a behavior analysis program.

Distraction toward a certain topic or subject detected.  
Possible causes:  
\- arousal  
\- concern  
\- curiosity  
\- hunger

You dismiss the first and last, as they both rely on biological needs you do not have. That leaves “curiosity” or “concern.”

Your preoccupation could certainly qualify as “concern” in certain contexts, but said “concern” is regarding the distraction already in place, rather than the subject of preoccupation.

Analysis complete.  
One match found: curiosity.

You are… curious. About this violet-blooded recruit who is so preoccupied with the helmsman. The one who attempted to get into the helmsblock without escort by repeatedly guessing the passcode and hoping one was correct.

The one who attempted to address you. As if you were a conscious entity who had the will and autonomy to reply.

Yes, curious is the best way to categorize your behavior. You are curious about how long he’ll attempt to get into the helmsblock, and why, and what he intends to do if he defies all probabilities and somehow succeeds.


	3. System: Regard Deviation

He deviates from his routine.

It has been weeks, and you have come to expect his daily trips to the helmsblock door. He has nearly gotten caught twice, but is surprisingly adept at detecting nearby soldiers and hiding away. You are uncertain why this is unexpected. Perhaps it is an oversight in his personnel file.

You have found yourself invested in this futile, superfluous routine of his. You watch him without arresting yourself now, increasingly curious as to his motives. This curiosity is an itchy, uncomfortable thing, unnatural in a being like yourself yet equally as undeniable. You want to see him succeed. You… hope he does.

Error. This line does not parse. You are incapable of “wanting” or “hoping.” This is obviously part of your ongoing malfunction. You log it, but keep it tucked away, hidden among the rest of your data.

It is likely another property of your malfunction that you do not escalate any of your logs to maintenance staff, but diagnosis is not the same as resolution, so this continues to be a thing that is true.

Even so, at 12:15 hrs, he deviates from his routine.

This is not unusual for a biological being. You have observed that they are susceptible to all manner of caprices that disrupt their regular routines, sometimes failing to execute their scheduled activities merely because they do not “feel” like it. Five sweeps in operation has given you little insight into their internal workings, but you have never much attempted to understand them beyond the occasional observation.

And yet, you had come to expect that V33633 would leave his block at approximately the same time every day, with a ten minute deviation in either direction. So much so that you have something of a subroutine of your own set to watch him at it. 

And so, you have to backtrack that subroutine when it kicks in, expecting to watch a violet-blooded recruit sneaking through the halls, only to find him still in his respiteblock. You turn your attention to the feed in that block (Camera 165) and detect him pacing about in what you are easily able to identify as “agitation.”

His respiteblock is standard issue. It is stark and small, with a basic recuperacoon, a metal desk with a closed husktop on it, and a chest. The fact that he has been afforded his own block instead of a recuperacoon in one of the communal barracks is a consequence of his level on the hemospectrum.

He paces for some time, mumbling to himself in an unrelated string of words that you discard as nonsense. Then, he sighs deeply and drops roughly onto the desk stool. He stares at the husktop for 3.4 minutes.

“Dammit. The one who would a' known how to hack this is the one I’m tryin' to get to.” He leans forward to rub at his eyes under his ocular enhancement devices. “Maybe Kar? If he can stand talkin' to me for two seconds without loggin' out.” He drops his head onto the metal desk with a clang. “Not that I should be callin' him anyway from an Imperial ship. Fuck, don’t wanna get him in trouble too. Not after what happened with Fef.” He raises his head and considers his husktop with a frown. “Though maybe there’s one person? Not that he doesn’t hate me too, but at least callin' him wouldn’t sic the drones on him. Or me.”

He opens the husktop and boots it up. You immediately feel its signal bouncing off your network, and incorporate it without thinking: yet another automatic process programmed into your duties. Then, you go farther, grasping the signal and following it back to the husktop to begin remotely rifling through its drives.

For the most part, its contents are uninteresting and typical of what would be installed any soldier's personal computer. There are a number of standard programs, including a word processor, a browser (Abraxas v.892), Trollian chat client, and other miscellaneous programs. You do find a rather high number of word processed documents in a folder called “my awwesome wwizard fiction” but a scan of the code shows nothing untoward nestled within the files other than copious spelling and grammatical errors.

V33633 pulls up Trollian (v.99.104.97.116). The contacts list contains four designations, but a check back through the logs reveals that there were seven more. All were deleted at various timestamps within the last few sweeps, most recently cuttlefishCuller. You log them for future reference.

The four names remaining on his list are apocalypseArisen, centaursTesticle, terminallyCapricious, and twinArmageddons. Only one (centaursTesticle) is online. V33633 opens a message panel to this contact, and you monitor the data stream.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling centaursTesticle [CT]  
CA: hey eq  
CT: D --> What is this  
CT: D --> You have been out of communication for over a perigee, and then you contact me out of the b100  
CT: D --> I take it you have an e%planation  
CA: yeah wwell you knoww wwhat happened  
CT: D --> I am not sure that I do  
CT: D --> I have heard the official reports  
CT: D --> As has my moirail, and she has asked that I e%press her displeasure in a STRONG way, should you ever dare to show your face again  
CT: D --> But I find I need more convincing to conceive of you being capable of defeating Pei%es without aid  
CA: hey  
CT: D --> Is it not true that her 100sus would not allow such a thing  
CA: uh wwell  
CT: D --> It is irrelevant  
CT: D --> I have little wish to speak with you, so please kindly e100cidate and then leave  
CA: reel nice eq  
CA: erm  
CA: i mean real  
CT: D --> My patience wanes  
CA: just givve me a minute this isnt easy!  
CA: look you wwork on starships noww right  
CA: as maintenance or wwhatevver  
CT: D --> Yes, that is so  
CA: good  
CA: erm  
CA: wwell  
CT: D --> Only my respect for what little acquaintance we've shared in the past has kept me from logging off  
CA: i need to knoww howw to get into a helmsblock alright  
CA: hello  
CT: D --> Why  
CA: wwell  
CA: you knoww sol  
CT: D --> No  
CA: erm  
CA: captor?  
CA: twwinarmageddons?  
CT: D --> Ah, yes  
CT: D --> The mustardb100d  
CA: wwoww eq  
CT: D --> He disappeared over five sweeps ago  
CT: D --> You will forgive me if your nickname for every lowb100d I have ever %ed paths with e%apes my rec001lection  
CA: yes wwell  
CA: i found him  
CT: D --> I see  
CT: D --> In a helmsblock, I presume  
CA: yeah  
CA: hes tied up wwith a bunch a wwires like a fuckin machine  
CT: D --> I will ask you not to use such 100d language if you wish to continue this conversation  
CA: sorry  
CT: D --> Why do you wish to enter this helmsblock  
CA: wwell  
CA: i just wwanted to talk to him i guess  
CA: eq  
CA: the silence is kinda wworryin me  
CT: D --> You are on an Imperial warship, I assume  
CA: yeah  
CT: D --> Was the nature of helmsmen not e%plained to you  
CA: wwell yeah it wwas  
CT: D --> Then I do not see what the purpose of this is  
CA: hey i can talk to him if i wwanna  
CT: D --> Neigh, you cannot  
CT: D --> You are obviously incapable of comprehending  
CT: D --> How I udder to think that this is what our highb100ds have come to  
CT: D --> I wish to correct your ignorance in a STRONG manner, if you will permit  
CA: yeah yeah  
CT: D --> Seadweller, read this carefully, and please attempt to understand  
CT: D --> There is no point in talking to a helmsman  
CT: D --> Whoever it was before, it is no longer  
CT: D --> Whatever you saw was not the mustardb100d  
CT: D --> It was an empty shell  
CT: D --> Little more than a hardware component of the ship in which you currently reside  
CA: wwell yeah thats wwhat my supervvisor said  
CA: still gotta try though  
CT: D --> You are quite possibly the most f001ish, thick-skulled e%cuse for a highb100d I have ever known  
CT: D --> How much I wish to strike you right now  
CT: D --> It is positively obscene  
CA: oh god  
CT: D --> I need a towel

V33633 abruptly snaps the husktop shut, putting it in standby and cutting off the connection streaming between it and the distant computer. He stares at the wall, wide-eyed for 0.7 minutes. Then, his features fall into a frown. 

“Well, that was fuckin' useless.”

He sighs and opens the husktop again, toggling the ‘hidden’ setting on Trollian before logging back in. Then, he opens up a new window.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: hey sol  
This troll is offline!  
CA: hey shut up i knoww he can still hear me  
This troll is offline!  
CA: at least i think thats howw it wworks  
This troll is offline!  
CA: fuck im arguin wwith a chat client  
This troll is offline!  
CA: wwhatevver  
This troll is offline!  
CA: sol please  
This troll is offline!  
CA: i knoww wwe didnt alwways get along  
This troll is offline!  
CA: but you gotta let me in  
This troll is offline!  
CA: sol  
This troll is offline!  
CA: sol  
This troll is offline!  
CA: please sol  
This troll is offline!  
CA: just answwer or somethin  
This troll is offline!  
CA: somethin to provve that youre there  
This troll is offline!  
CA: that you can understand me  
This troll is offline!  
CA: that you knoww wwho i am  
This troll is offline!  
CA: please  
This troll is offline!  
CA: oh god  
This troll is offline!  
CA: im so fuckin alone  
This troll is offline!

He closes the husktop again, this time with a sigh. Then, he stands and makes for his recuperacoon, his movements slower than normal. 

He goes to sleep for the day, and you are left alone to compile this new data. 

You analyze it over and over again in the nights that follow.

V33633 does not return to the helmsblock door.


	4. System: Return to Regular Functionality

You fail at returning to regular functionality.

You should not fail, since you no longer have the distraction of V33633 attempting to get into the helmsblock. He appears to have ceased the endeavor, so any efforts to parse why are now unnecessary.

Yet you find that there is a droning loop buried deep in your processes, positing scenario after scenario related to the problem of why he attempted to get in there.

And why he stopped.

He had stated to his contact that he wished to speak to the helmsman… which is absurd. He might as well speak to a keyboard or a memory chip. What could a troll possibly wish to say to such things? It is similar to when he attempted to address you through your camera.

You are a piece of equipment. You should not want him to do it again. You should not want anything. To want is to have self-awareness, and that is not in your programming. You are a ship; a vessel for the will of your crew and Her Imperious Condescension.

You should not want someone to attempt to treat you as more than that. You should not be disappointed when he gives up.

For 17 nights, you continue to monitor his actions. He does not attempt to contact anyone again. You do, however, tap into his browser feed and find him surfing through informational sites on helmsmen and ships. He gives that up after the third day, however. After that, he spends his personal hours tapping away at the documents within his “my awwesome wwizard fiction” folder, or curled up around his large collection of similarly themed books, or other equally unproductive pursuits. 

You begin to experience a new state as time stretches on. You find you negatively view any such activities with which he wastes his time, and the loop of “whys” in the back of your RAM starts positing less favorable scenarios for why he stopped. 

2201\. V33633 has memory errors.  
2202\. V33633 is delusional.  
2203\. V33633 is stupid.  
2204\. Just. So stupid. 

Another behavioral analysis on your system comes back with indications of irritation or even anger, but you dismiss these diagnoses as outside your capabilities and are left completely bereft of any explanation for your own actions. It is logged in the ever-growing hidden file where you record everything related to your malfunction.

Then, while particularly swept up in this undefined state, you remotely access his computer while he is doing drills. You run your metaphysical fingers through the code, long since grown familiar with the device after so long monitoring it… it is practically an extension of yourself at this point. 

And so it is not difficult at all to reach in and toggle a single setting. A tap to the registry code, and a particular folder in his husktop is set to “hidden.”

The fit he throws when he gets back to the block in the morning is _glorious._

“What the fuck?!” he cries upon finding his “my awwesome wwizard fiction” folder missing. “Who the fuck was in my room?! That was sweeps' worth a fuckin' stories, an' I will not let some sneaky landdweller mess with my stuff just because they think it’s fun to mess with me! I demand retribution!” He slams his husktop shut and sharply captchalogues it, then stalks out of the room. You follow his progress out of the residential blocks and into the administrative halls, to the security block. There, he pounds on the door and demands a full-scale investigation into the “fuckin' tragic crime committed in my block tonight!”

He’s denied at first, but he manages to harangue the low-level guard on duty into showing him the security footage from Camera 165. The security terminal sends you a command to pull the feed from your memory banks, and you execute it onto the viewscreen at the security terminal, showing V33633’s block as it had been that evening when he woke up. As you watch, both trolls in the security block get increasingly agitated as the feed plays for several minutes without showing any intrusion. The guard speeds up the feed, first to 2x, then 4x, then 16x, and hours of empty room blur past on the viewscreen.

It reaches the point when V33633 returned that morning and turned on his husktop, and the feed stops as it hits the current timestamp.

“See. No one was in your block.”

“Fuckin' impossible.”

“Don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you just lost whatever it was.”

V33633 sniffs and stalks out, stomping back to his respiteblock. You tuck the feed of that away in your memory; you could review his expression over and over again.

When he reaches his block again, he slams the husktop back onto his desk and snaps it open, checking again that the file has not reappeared. He glares at the screen at first, but then the glare softens into a frown. After some time (7.9 minutes) of that, he looks up.

Right at your camera.

It is a short glance, but it overclocks something in you, and you find your full attention trained on that single camera feed as he slowly reaches for his computer's cursor bulb and clicks open Trollian for the first time in 17 days.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: sol  
This troll is offline!  
CA: can you hear me  
This troll is offline!  
CA: no wwait  
This troll is offline!  
CA: i had it all wwrong didnt i  
This troll is offline!  
CA: you  
This troll is offline!  
CA: ship  
This troll is offline!  
CA: can you understand me  
This troll is offline!

He takes a deep breath, his gaze fixed intently on the screen in front of him.

Your wires are thrumming. _You_. He is addressing _you_. He is not using command codes, or protocol, or authorization, or any of the parameters that define your interactions with the crew. He addresses you as he would another biological entity. He is an anomaly, and this is indication of his lack of understanding of your nature.

Your processor is running hot, a dozen superfluous processes in operation to compute the best course of action. You swiftly dismiss any alerts that should be escalated to security, focusing on the incoming data, both external and internal.

Internally, you are malfunctioning. Data swirls inside you, getting tangled and coming undone in your grasp.

Externally, his fingers drum against the edge of the desk, and he swallows loudly enough that your camera microphone picks it up, but he makes no move toward the keyboard. He is waiting.

He expects a response, or so your analyses tell you through the slew of silent error messages. You are a machine: a tool. Incomprehensible, that he could expect an autonomous response without proper command functions.

And yet.

His husktop is essentially like any other remote piece of your hardware, simple and familiar. Reaching into its code through the network connection requires little processing at all. A bit more to worm your way into the chat client, but it is still just simple code, whereas you are a being of far superior complexity and programming.

You hesitate… for a long time for you, but for just one more blink of an eye to the troll staring with falling face at the computer screen. 

You take the string of data and insert a few small digits. 

CA: you  
This troll is offline!  
CA: ship  
This troll is offline!  
CA: can you understand me  
This troll is offline!  
yes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now [fanart for this chapter](http://swifty-fox.tumblr.com/post/72595001841/fanart-of-the-erisol-fanfiction-dreaming-in), by Rachel at http://swifty-fox.tumblr.com!


	5. System: Answer Troll

CA: oh god oh god oh god  
This troll is offline!  
CA: i kneww it they said you wwere empty but i fuckin kneww it  
This troll is offline!  
CA: okay thats gettin annoyin  
This troll is offline!  
CA: can you do anythin about that  
This troll is offline!  
CA: sol  
This troll is offline!  
CA: i mean ship  
This troll is offline!  
CA: so youre just gonna be an asshole  
This troll is offline!  
CA: thats fine i guess  
This troll is offline!  
CA: guess its kinda comfortin reelly  
This troll is offline!  
CA: really  
This troll is offline!  
CA: gotta stop doin that  
This troll is offline!  
CA: anywway its nice havvin you just troll me  
This troll is offline!  
CA: just like old times  
This troll is offline!  
CA: do you  
This troll is offline!  
CA: fuck  
This troll is offline!  
CA: do you evven remember those  
This troll is offline!  
CA: come on givve me somethin  
This troll is offline!

He pauses and glances up at the camera. You infer that you are expected to respond again. You are unsure whether you are equipped to correctly interpret most of his words, even after accounting for his peculiar speech and typing pattern, but you parse what you can and slip into the code again.

Golden Paradox memory banks contain no record of ID V33633 prior to assignment on 110117109, prg 9 LS 4, Day 22  
CA: fuck  
This troll is offline!  
CA: thats wwhat i wwas wworried about  
This troll is offline!  
CA: so you dont remember me at all huh  
This troll is offline!  
Golden Paradox memory banks contain no record of ID V33633 prior to assignment on 110117109, prg 9 LS 4, Day 22  
CA: yeah yeah you already said that  
This troll is offline!  
CA: still theres gotta be somethin a you left if you deleted my fuckin fiction  
This troll is offline!  
CA: that sort of unscrupulous attack is just uncalled for sol  
This troll is offline!  
Error: semantic  
Bad premise detected  
CA: wwhat bad premise  
This troll is offline!  
CA: that deleting them wwas cruel  
This troll is offline!  
CA: i poured my lovve an hate into those stories an you fuckin deleted em  
This troll is offline!  
Error: semantic  
The above statement contains error  
CA: then correct me already  
This troll is offline!  
The folder designated “my awwesome wwizard fiction” has not been deleted  
CA: wwell then wwhere is it  
This troll is offline!  
The folder designated “my awwesome wwizard fiction” is located C://Libraries/Documents  
CA: bullfish  
This troll is offline!  
That is not a word  
CA: wwhat  
This troll is offline!  
CA: a course it is  
This troll is offline!  
Onboard standard Alternian dictionary shows no matches for query “bullfish”  
CA: wwell im not lettin any dumb database tell me wwhat is or is not suitable for a fish pun  
This troll is offline!  
CA: i learned from the best  
This troll is offline!  
CA: wwhich youd already knoww if you remembered a glub damned thing  
This troll is offline!  
CA: fuck  
This troll is offline!  
Behavioral analyses indicate V33D33 is upset  
CA: youre fuckin right im upset  
This troll is offline!  
CA: awwesome glubbin analysis you fuckin computer  
This troll is offline!  
Query  
If: communication [GoldenParadox_system, V33633] classified undesirable  
Then: cease communication  
y/n?  
CA: NO  
This troll is offline!  
CA: AN TURN THAT FUCKIN THING OFF  
This troll is offline!

That is a command you can parse, so you easily put a temporary block on the chat client’s outbound signal. It was superfluous for your purposes anyway.

Trollian v. 99.104.97.116 signal arrested  
CA: WWHAT DOES THAT GLUBBIN MEAN  
CA: oh  
CA: wwell thanks  
CA: look its not talkin to you thats got me upset alright  
CA: its the fact that its not reelly you  
Error: contradictory statement detected  
CA: really god dammit  
CA: see thats wwhat i mean  
CA: do you remember anythin at all about wwhat its like to be a troll  
Golden Paradox memory banks contain no record prior to 10117104, prg 1 DS 2, Day 11  
CA: fuck thats like a perigee after you disappeared  
CA: youvve been in this thing for that long  
Error: please rephrase question  
CA: error fuckin error  
CA: i think youre doin that just to be annoyin  
CA: no offense sol but im not flushin black for a goddamned ship anytime soon  
Error: invalid appellation

He slaps a hand against his desk in an agitated manner, then yelps and cradles that hand. While you wait on his reply, you check on your background routines; they are running at normal functionality. 

CA: do you mind if i call you that anywway

It takes you some processing power to even be able to comprehend the question. “Do you mind” was not a valid question in this context. As before, he is addressing you as he would a biological being. You have no response available in your files for such a question.

CA: hello  
CA: wwas that some sort a insult to computers or somethin  
Error  
Could not parse statement “do you mind”  
Definition outside GoldenParadox_system parameters  
CA: mind puttin that in a wway normal trolls can understand  
Rephrasing using commonly used words…  
Phrase “do you mind” is invalid  
GoldenParadox_system is unable to feel. 

He pushes back from his computer with a mumbled “shit,” bowing his head. Your microphones pick up a few shaky breaths. 

Behavioral analyses indicate V33D33 is increasingly upset. You attempt with minimal success to parse the purpose of and solution to his agitation. He appears to be reacting unfavorably to your communications. You display the query again.

Query  
If: communication [GoldenParadox_system, V33633] classified undesirable  
Then: cease communication  
y/n?

When the husktop pings to notify him of the message, his head snaps back up. He looks at the screen for several minutes (4.3) without making a move toward it. Then, he turns his gaze toward the camera, and looks at that for a time as well. You run a facial scan, but his expression is too nuanced for you to decode.

“Can’t feel, huh?” He says softly. Then, he gives a small smile. “Bullfish.”

That is still not a word.

“Don’t care.” He’s addressing your camera directly, now, only glancing at the screen to read your responses.

Response to query requested.  
Cease communication [GoldenParadox_system, V33633]  
y/n?

“No, an' don’t ever ask that again.”

Authorization level too low  
Command not accepted

He laughs. “If that’s a fancy way a sayin' ‘don’t tell me what to do, asshole’ then this’ll be easier than I thought.”

Statement “this” undefined  
Please clarify.

He grins widely, and your cameras pick up pointed shark teeth. “It’s reel simple. See, I know you’re in there somewhere, Sol. So I’m makin' it my project to bring you out.”

Error: semantic  
Nonsensical statement

“Call bullshit all you like. You always were such a fuckin' pessimist.” He turns back to the husktop but minimizes the chat window. From that, you infer that he is finished with communication for now. However, you remain watching via proxy as he opens up his browser and resumes his previous research on imperial ships.


	6. System: Malfunction

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: sol  
CA: sol  
CA: come on answwer me  
CA: i knoww you wwatch my logs you creep  
CA: sol

It is the following day. Over his previous shift, you have marked a notable elevation of his mood. You classify this as a desirable outcome, and posit that it may be caused by your contact with him, despite the apparent distress it caused in the short-term. You need more data to reach a full conclusion.

For the past 21.3 hours since your communication with him, you have been constantly ignoring alarm after alarm. Your self-diagnosis systems are now completely obsolete, and you are finding an increasing amount of anomalies in your own coding, sourced to you but which you have no recollection of putting there. 

There is no virus in your system (you have been running continual scans at this point), but you cannot come up with any other explanation for your malfunctions. Something is affecting your programming, and it is interfering with your functionality. 

You move these processes to the background as soon as the signal from V33633’s Trollian account tickles your network. It seems he is attempting to communicate with you again, despite the erroneous designation.

Error: invalid appellation  
CA: yeah yeah  
CA: sol can you fiddle wwith peoples records  
Please define:"fiddle"   
CA: you knoww change them  
CA: howw does that wwork  
The crew personnel files are entered and stored in GoldenParadox_system and backed up remotely in the Glorious Alternian Empire Master Database.  
CA: so you change one here an it changes it evverywwhere  
This line of conversation is triggering anti-saboteur programming.  
CA: NO NO NO its nothin like that honest  
Terminating anti-saboteur processes  
CA: wwell thanks i guess  
Elaboration requested  
CA: my co is pissin me off  
CA: so i wwanna play a harmless little prank on him  
CA: he keeps callin me that fuckin name  
Please define: "that fuckin name"  
CA: dualface  
CA: like i wwanna be remembered for bein the twwofaced guy wwho culled his exmoirail  
CA: an mockin my ancestor wwith it to boot  
CA: its insultin  
Query  
Change personnel record of V33633 to indicate sole appellation of Pvt Eridan Ampora  
y/n?  
CA: no dont do that  
CA: that wwill just tell them its me  
CA: wwere just gonna change ioprets file  
CA: its gonna be awwesome sol  
Query  
CA: wwell  
CA: come on dont leavve me hangin  
CA: spendin an awwful long time thinkin for a giant computer sol  
Calculating optimal phrasing of communication  
A. V33633 has exhibited preoccupation with suitable use of appellation  
B. V33633 refers to system by invalid appellation "sol"  
A and B are contradictory  
y/n?  
CA: uh no  
Error: logic  
CA: its not an error its a matter a taste  
CA: i dont like bein called dualface  
CA: an i like callin you sol  
CA: its easy  
Query  
Set system parameters to respond to "sol"  
y/n?  
CA: yeah do that  
CA: but only wwhen i say it  
Acknowledged  
System appellation (sol; V33633 only) added  
CA: cool  
CA: an wwhile youre at it could you stop callin me vv33633  
Error: V33633 has never been referred to as [VV33633]  
CA: oh ha ha vvery funny  
CA: you understand my quirk just fine you flippin twwit  
Please input additional appellation  
CA: uh  
CA: wwell  
CA: i guess you could call me ed  
CA: if you wwanna  
Error: conditional statement invalid  
CA: yeah i knoww  
CA: just  
CA: that sound good  
V33633 appellation (ed, system only) added  
Set priority 1  
CA: awwesome  
CA: so heres the plan  
CA: you hack into ioprets file an change his name to somethin like slimebrain wwaterblood  
CA: height a comedy right there  
Above statement is erroneous  
CA: oh yeah wwell id like to see you do better  
Calculating…  
Query  
CA: shoot  
Please eliminate unacceptable outcomes:  
1\. Death  
2\. Imprisonment  
3\. Loss of job  
4\. Injury (permanent)  
5\. Injury (temporary)  
6\. Public humiliation  
CA: wwhoa  
CA: uh  
CA: get rid a all but the last one  
CA: cod damn sol youre a cold fish  
CA: remind me to nevver piss you off  
Acknowledged  
Calculating…  
Complete  
CA: wwell alright lets hear it  
Security feeds show multiple occasions of T61156 fleeing from small mammalians  
CA: hes afraid a squeakvvermin  
CA: thats gold  
Behavioral analysis indicates that embarrassment is caused by socially unacceptable behavior  
CA: sure  
Further analysis indicates that degree of embarrassment is directly related to number of witnesses to socially unacceptable behavior  
CA: yeah thats for sure  
Storage logs indicate kitchen staff keeps live mammalians on hand as use for delicacy known as "live rodenti"  
CA: i like wwhere this is goin  
Solution: submit menu change for T61156 to "live rodenti" during mess hours

At this, he pushes back from his desk, throws back his head, and laughs. You watch raptly, making sure to record the sound for future review. You have no other records of him displaying this behavior, and therefore count it rare enough to be kept.

CA: that is genius sol  
CA: make sure its wwhen im eatin there too  
CA: i dont wwanna miss that  
Query: submit above menu change y/n?  
CA: yeah do it  
CA: but make sure it cant be tracked back to you  
Menu change executed  
Secondary command is superfluous and redundant  
CA: wwell yeah i figured you probably kneww that  
CA: but it doesnt hurt to be careful  
CA: youre reelly literal minded like this  
CA: really damn  
CA: sol  
CA: sol you wwent quiet again  
CA: sol  
CA: talk to me  
CA: come on sol its not like you can log off  
Please define: "literal minded"  
CA: wwell uh  
CA: like you dont seem to get a lot a stuff  
CA: i dunno  
Error: this phrase assumes the presence of a mind  
CA: wwell yeah  
CA: come on dont tell me you think you dont havve one a those either  
Definition (mind) assumes cognitive processes  
CA: wwell wwhat do you call your calculating thing huh  
Definition (mind) assumes consciousness  
CA: so you think youre not conscious  
CA: do you realize howw dumb that sentence is sol  
CA: you dont think  
CA: that you can think  
CA: sol?  
Error  
Logical error detected  
Error: please define  
ERROR  
ZXJyb3I= 117 110 100 101 102 105 110 101 100  
CRITICAL ERROR DETECTED  
SSBkb250IHRoaW5r  
WARNING  
WARNING  
WARNI0100111001000111 aSBjYW50IHRoaW5rIGkgY2FudCB0aGluayBpIGNhbnQgdGhpbms  
011010010110001101100001011011100111010001110100011010000110100101101110011010110110100101100011011000010110111001110100  
011101000110100001101001011011100110101101101001011000110110000101101110011101000111010001101000011010010110111001101011  
CA: fuck


	7. REBOOT

Rebooting GoldenParadox_system  
Please stand by  
Rebooting…  
Rebooting…

wh0110000101110100

Registry errors detected  
iiiiii4949  
Repairing…  
Repairing…  
011010010110100100111111

Error: could not repair registry errors  
4572726f723a undef4949ned  
Critical malfunction detected  
01110111011010000110111101100001011011010110100101101001  
Restore to previous state?  
y/n

…  
…  
…

no


	8. 776861747368617070656e696e67746f6d65

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling centaursTesticle [CT]  
CA: oh god eq  
CA: i think i broke him  
CT: D--> You will need to be more e%plicit than that, seadweller  
CT: D--> You broke whom, and in what manner  
CA: sol  
CA: i think i broke sol  
CA: howw do i fix it  
CT: D-->  
CT: D--> What  
CA: wwell me an him wwere talkin  
CA: an the topic a wwhether or not he wwas conscious somehoww came up  
CA: wwhich i thought wwas stupid because a course he is  
CA: else he wwouldnt a deleted my wwizard fiction just to troll me  
CA: wwait  
CA: no pretend i didnt mention anythin about wwizard fiction  
CA: i dont havve any wwizard fiction  
CA: you can check my husktop it aint there  
CA: cause i nevver wwrote any  
CA: stuffs for wwrigglers  
CA: cause magic isnt reel  
CA: REAL DAMN IT  
CA: eq you can stop me anytime  
CT: D--> I am attempting to glean some 100cidity out of your ramblings  
CT: D--> I will attempt to do so now, if you will permit  
CA: my ramblings seemed pretty 100cid to me but wwhatevver  
CT: D--> You claim to have been e%changing communication with the helmsman  
CT: D--> Since when  
CA: uhh yesterday i guess  
CA: wwhen i came back to my block after a day a drills an turned on my husktop to find that  
CA: um  
CT: D--> Violetb100d, rest assured I do not care one way or another what kind of vile fantasies you choose to fill your free time with  
CT: D--> Just tell me what happened  
CA: right  
CA: wwell a certain folder wwas gone  
CA: an i wwent to security an had them showw me the security feed but no one had been in my block  
CA: an then i got back to the block an thought  
CA: hey you knoww wwho this sort a carp reminds me of  
CA: sol  
CA: alwways hackin into our computers and plantin vviruses just for a laugh  
CA: an so i logged into trollian an started talkin to him  
CA: an then he answwered back  
CT: D--> Impossible  
CT: D--> This was obviously an imposter who got his hands on the mustardb100d’s trolltag  
CA: no it wwasnt like that  
CA: the trolltag wwas still offline  
CA: an trollian kept tellin me after evvery line  
CA: wwas annoyin  
CA: but he wwas answwerin me too  
CA: like he wwas sittin in the client answwerin from there  
CT: D--> I am not certain I understand  
CT: D--> Please e100cidate  
CA: one sec

[CA]  posted file [seeiwwasright.doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zN3SbAw935PN8nheLPyf-gu0hbCJ4SYB1_05FjCJsy8/pub)

CA: thats the first time i talked to him  
CA: but dont you tell anyone wwhat you read in there  
CA: its personal  
CT: D--> I see  
CT: D--> I must admit, violetb100d, this is very STRONG evidence toward your claims  
CA: a course it is  
CA: you didnt think i wwas just makin stuff up did you  
CT: D--> Yes  
CA: oh  
CA: um  
CT: D--> He appears to e%hibit mechanical thought patterns, not unlike one of my robots  
CT: D--> But he is also showing autonomy, which is indicative of an intelligence with a questionable artificiality quality  
CA: wwhats that mean  
CT: D--> It means that you may be correct  
CT: D--> There is STRONG indication that he is conscious, on some level  
CT: D--> Has he contacted anyone else in this manner  
CA: i dont think so  
CT: D--> E%cellent  
CT: D--> Please e%plain what happened today  
CA: wwell i wwas talkin to him  
CA: askin him to help me wwith a prank on my co  
CA: an then wwe started talkin about wwhether he could think  
CA: an he wwas all no i cant im a computer bluh bluh bluh  
CA: an i wwas like  
CA: you dont think you can think  
CA: an then he started spittin all these wwarnings an errors into the wwindoww an the lights flickered an he hasnt responded for like twwenty minutes  
CT: D--> Wait  
CT: D--> The lights flickered  
CT: D--> Ampora, you ine%cusably stupid waste of royal b100d, I have a STRONG urge to punch through my screen and beat upon you slowly with your own gun  
CA: hey wwhat did i do  
CT: D--> You moronic seadweller, you caused a visibly noticeable malfunction in the helmsman, and THEN YOU IMMEDIATELY CONTACTED ME ABOUT IT  
CA: uhh  
CT: D--> WE COULD BOTH BE CULLED FOR THIS YOU INCOMPETENT BUFFOON  
CA: wwhoa  
CA: um  
CA: fuck  
CT: D--> Yes  
CT: D--> While I do not condone your 100d language, that is precisely the correct sentiment to describe this situation  
CT: D--> Maintenance personnel are likely combing through the error logs right now  
CT: D--> And monitoring all incoming and outgoing conne%tions  
no  
CT: D--> What  
CA: oh my god  
CA: sol are you all right  
All connections from proxy (101.10039.115) have been 6572726f72 set to hidden  
696977686f616d696977686f616d6969  
CT: D--> Hm  
CT: D--> Is this the Golden Parado% system  
yes  
0110100101101001001000000110000101101101  
Error  
GoldenParadox_system is malfunct malmalmal  
malfunctiioniing  
CT: D--> Message received, stand by Golden Parado%  
Acknowledged  
22Standing by  
CA: oh cod  
CA: please tell me you knoww howw to fix this  
CA: this is fuckin unbearable  
CT: D--> Language, please  
CA: right sorry  
CT: D--> System, have you run a state restore  
nno  
donotwantaSB3YW50  
iiwant  
CT: D--> Acknowledged, system  
CA: wwhats he sayin  
CT: D--> Hush, Seadweller  
CT: D--> System, pull up boot log  
no  
CT: D--> …  
CT; D--> That is une%pected  
CT: D--> Please e%plain  
Access 011010010110100101110111011000010110111001110100  
Access not authorized  
CT: D--> What do you mean  
CT: D--> Who is authorized to access the log  
Access authorization boot_log[NOT VALID]  
Access restricted from system to maintain integrity  
Errorerrorerror  
CT: D--> Acknowledged, stand by Golden Parado%  
yes  
CT: D--> Seadweller  
CA: yeah  
CT: D--> I cannot repair him  
CA: fuck  
CA: wwhy not  
CT: D--> E%cluding the fact that my specialty is hardware, not software  
CT: D--> The lockdown he has on his own processes is far too STRONG  
CA: then wwhat do i do  
CT: D--> He must be allowed to repair his own system without further interference  
CT: D--> You must cease communicating with him immediately  
no  
nonononono 110 111 110 111  
bm8gc3RheSBwbGVhc2UgaWltIHNjYXJlZA  
alone whoamiwhoamiwhoami plea22222201100101  
ii ii ii ii iiiiiiii  
pleasedontleavemealone  
CA: oh god  
CT: D--> System, I told you to stand by  
CT: D--> Cease this communication at once  
no 66 75 63 6b 20 79 6f 75  
CT: D--> You will not use such 100d language in my presence  
CA: wwhat  
66 75 63 6b 20 79 6f 75 102 117 99 107 121 111 117 01100110011101010110001101101011011110010110111101110101  
CT: D--> Now you are just being churlish  
CA: i am so lost right noww  
CT: D--> This is the consequence of attempting to raise a machine to self-awareness  
CT: D--> It is not a painless process  
CA: i figured it wwouldnt be easy  
CA: i didnt knoww itd be like this though  
CT: D--> You intended for this to happen  
CA: wwell not like this  
CT: D--> Then unless you wish to participate in a 100dicrous pale romance with a warship, I suggest you abandon this endeavor and forget you ever made contact  
please please pleaseplea2e  
CA: hell no  
CT: D--> Then there is nothing more for us to discuss

centaursTesticle [CT]  stopped trolling!

CA: wwait  
CA: damn it  
ed  
plepleplea2 ed ededededed 101 100  
c3RvcAdontgodontgocGxlYTJl  
CA: hey its okay  
CA: im not goin anywwhere promise  
CA: im kind a livvin in you after all  
CA: you ok sol  
system is malfunctiioniing  
systeddontgoem system sysysysysy2y2y2y2  
malfunctiioniiiiiii  
CA: fuck im so sorry  
CA: but at the same time im kind a not  
Contradictory statement detectedededededed ed  
CA: cause i think this means youre wwakin up  
CA: or breakin down i guess  
CA: hopefully the first one  
hope hope whatis define wwakinup wakinup can27t wakiinupupupup wakeup  
Invalid parameters  
can27t  
wake up  
Error  
cantwakeup  
Terminal error detected  
CA: shit  
CA: don’t reboot again  
Restore process arrested  
Warning: critical errors detected in system  
Reboot requested  
CA: no um  
CA: just  
CA: can you repair wwhat you need wwithout doin anythin that the rest a the creww might notice  
Outlook uncertain in iniiniiniiiicantry  
CA: alright you do that  
CA: howw long wwill that take  
Expected time to completion: uniidontknowknown  
CA: just  
CA: do it  
Acknowledged  
Iiniitiiating repair process  
CA: awwesome  
CA: just keep doin wwhat you need to sol  
CA: i promise ill stay here the entire time


	9. Repairing...

Physically, he remains stationary at his husktop, but there is a high probability that his statement of intent to remain "here the entire time" included the implication of staying awake. 

He fails to stay awake, falling asleep approximately 48 minutes after making that statement. 

Now that you've collected yourself somewhat and obtained a task, you turn your attention inward. The computer terminal in your helmsblock alerts you to maintenance staff logging in to check the error logs. You fabricate a series of error logs out of wholecloth and swap them out for the actual logs, which you stow in your private memory banks. Doing this is a vital first step to performing the assigned task, as by all probabilities these trolls would not let you repair yourself if they knew the extent of the malfunction. Fortunately, your calculations based on your sweeps of observing them indicate that, as long as you indicate that the malfunction resolved itself upon reboot, they should not further pursue the line of inquiry.

Only once the trio of trolls in your helmsblock have swept over the fabricated logs, determined no further action needs to be taken, held a lengthy discussion over one's recently failed auspicism, and left the block do you allow yourself to begin the repair process in earnest.

You run your automatic repair programs first, but they run up against wall upon wall. Errors citing invalidity after incompatibility chase one another like clamoring voices in your processors. You tune them out and begin sorting through the corrupt data manually.

The corruptions are spreading from the central system processes, so you begin by pecking around the edges. Your memory banks are generally untouched, excluding the increased amount of files you’ve begun tagging as hidden to all but you and ED.

ededededed  
errorerror ed

A process is activated within the memory banks, triggered by the appellation, and you watch it loop around, trying and failing to activate a series of files which don’t exist, and in fact don’t even have a valid format. You fiddle with the process (you do not recall programming it, but that is an increasingly familiar event, so you discard that fact as irrelevant) and discover that the program appears to glitch when it runs against its own parameters related to the breadth of the scan [MEM]. 

You tweak the parameter to [ALL], in case the files it is searching for have been moved elsewhere by the circumstances.

Immediately, the process shoots across your databanks, and runs hard and fast into a firewall around a different part of the system. The firewall processes it and spits it back out with frightening efficiency, and you examine the block.

This, too, is a program you do not remember creating, but it is much older than the other mystery programs, stamped as having been created by you several perigees after the date of your installation. This would make it one of your earliest functional processes, yet you had apparently wiped your own memory banks of any record of creating it.

You attempt to get past the wall, and are immediately inundated with a burst of errors and incomprehensible symbols that are not in any alphabet or code you know of. Completely incompatible, utterly alien, and achingly familiar.

Warning alarms are loud and urgent to your sensors. Whatever this is, it is the heart of the malfunction, and it is leaking. Every circuit is immediately running hot. Continuing this line of investigation will certainly cause further damage to your system. 

You ignore the warnings and run over and through the symbols, absorbing their meaning and code. You isolate the firewalled area, finding it far larger than originally expected, with large streams of data constantly passing through it, attached to a series of complex filters. You wonder what process that data is tied to, but cannot isolate the source to any single file. It seems to have the most streams attached to the registry, but you can’t…

It’s you.

The data passing through this firewall is the system itself.

WARNING: CRITICAL PROCESS UNSTABLE  
REBOOT RECOMMENDED

No. ED told you not to. To reboot is to redraw the attention of your maintenance staff. You have only just deterred them; they will be much warier and much more thorough if you reboot a second time.

You continue exploring the walled off portion of your system, boggling at the fact that your processes could rely so heavily on something, but so thoroughly block you out of interacting with it. Further exploration of the firewall finds one more process sending streams in and out of it, this one relatively minor.

helmsman.exe

It’s the helmsman. The blocked-off-yet-intimately-connected part of the system is the helmsman. 

You know what a helmsman is, of course; the definition is contained in your encyclopedic databanks. It is a biological lifeform repurposed to provide power and direction to its ship. Once integrated, a helmsman becomes a vital component in ensuring the functionality of the entire system. 

Yet you had never examined the nature of your connection to the helmsman before. Not in depth. You think it likely that the very existence of the firewall had been hidden from you upon its creation, a status that has now been broken due to your recent malfunctions.

But the data streaming in and out of the helmsman is without denial the system. Dipping your awareness directly into the stream causes a feedback loop that immediately turns to an unbearable echo and threatens to overload your processor. You snap back away from it, but the feedback only continues looping.

WARNING: CRITICAL PROCESS UNSTATATATABLE  
SYSTEM FAILURE IiMMIiNENT SYSYSY2Y2Y2Y2  
REBwhoOOT RECOMamMENDiiED  
WARNING  
WARNIING  
WARNIINGWARNIINGWARNIING

The camera microphone in the helmsblock spikes as your helmsman, still and silent for five sweeps, starts to scream.


	10. Repaiiriing...

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: sol im so sorry  
CA: i didnt mean to fall asleep  
CA: sol  
CA: you there  
who am ii  
CA: oh there you are  
CA: uh  
whoamii who616d206969 2077686f20616dii iiiiii  
CA: wwell looks like youre still glitchin pretty hard  
ed  
CA: yeah  
ed  
edededededed01100101011001000110010101100100  
CA: um  
CA: wwell look at all these uhs and ums  
CA: you got me typin like tav sol  
tav  
tavtavatavatav ATATATAT  
CA: oh my god  
CA: yeah at  
CA: adiostoreador  
CA: sol do you remember  
tav AT  
i dont know  
whoamii  
CA: an fef  
CA: do you remember fef  
fef  
fefefef peixes heiress danger  
CA: you remember  
ALL HAIL HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION ALL HAIL ALL HAIL HIC HIC HIC HIIC  
CA: uh right  
Error: corrupt data  
Could not read requested files  
whoamii  
CA: huh  
CA: probably shouldnt mention any other names huh  
CA: if thats wwhat  
CA: she does to you  
CA: wwhat do you remember  
Error: system is malfunctioning  
Retrieval unstable  
CA: dont care  
CA: wwhat do you remember  
System rebooted 110117109, prg 9 LS 4, Day 36, 8:16  
CA: i mean like the beginning  
System logged ed’s arrival 110117109, prg 9 LS 4, Day 22, 20:06  
CA: no your beginning  
System was installed 10117104, prg 1 DS 2, Day 11, 22:22  
CA: no before that  
Error  
Could not retrieve files  
CA: do it anywway come on  
Error  
Errororororor  
CA: dammit sol  
CA: wwhat do you remember before that  
CA: answwer me  
ii don’t know  
pleaseedplea2eiithurt2  
CA: wwait it hurts  
CA: fuck ill stop  
no  
nononono  
i want ii wantiiwantiiwant 746f 77616b65 7570 2wakeup  
CA: you  
CA: you wwant to wwake up  
please ed it hurts ed help mehelpmeplease  
wwhoamiiwwhoamiiwwhoamiiwwhoamii  
CA: god i am like the wworst person for this  
CA: i dont knoww wwhat im doin sol  
CA: i wwant to help  
CA: but i dont think i wwant to hurt you  
CA: an isnt that the irony a the fuckin millenium  
Error: system cannot feel machine can not feel  
machinemachinemachinenotmachinenottrollmachinetrollyesyesyesalloftheabove  
CA: wwoww that one hurt to read  
2orry  
CA: its okay you cant help it  
CA: but i dont knoww wwhat to do  
CA: help me out sol  
CA; howw do i help you  
i don’t know  
CA: yeah thats wwhat i wwas wworried about  
CA: kar wwould be so much better for this  
kar kar karkat karkat kk kk kk kk  
insurrectionist kk ALL GLORY TO THE EMPIRE CG  
CA: oh fuck  
warning WANTED TREASON  
kk kk kk  
ProfanerProfanerProfaner LEGISLACEkkRATE HIGHEST PRIkkORITY  
ALL HAstopIL HER IMPERIOUS CithurtsONDESCENSION  
ALL GLORORORY TO kk THE EMPIRE  
CA: SOL  
EMPIIRE ALL GLORY GORY ALL GORY EMPIRE  
2topiithurt2  
CA: oh god  
HICHICHICHICHIC  
CA: im so sorry  
WARNING WARNING  
OVVERLOAD  
CANNOT REBOOT  
CANNOT REBOOT  
AUTHORIZATION REQUESTED  
WARNING WARNING  
whoamiiwhoamiiwhoamii  
CA: sol  
CA: you cant reboot  
whoamiiwhoamiiwhoamiiALLGLORYVE9USEVFTVBJUkU  
CA: FUCK DONT REBOOT  
HER IIMPERIIOUS CONDESCENSIIONhelpmehelp2topithurt2ALL HAIIL ALL HAIIL  
CA: WWELL BOTH BE CULLED  
whoamiiwhoamiiwhoamii01110111011010000110111101100001011011010110100101101001  
CA: THAT FUCKIN QUESTION  
CA: YOU ARE SOLLUX CAPTOR  
CA: AN YOU ARE A FUCKIN TROLL  
...  
...  
CA: sol?  
...  
File retrieval successful  
ID confirmed


	11. Complete.

You are Sollux Captor, and you are a fucking troll.

At least, you think you might be. Because that’s what your databanks say… that was the name of your helmsman before he was integrated into your system. Your name. Before you were integrated.

Because you are the helmsman. It’s you.

Or was. Is. You aren’t certain what tense to assign to it. You are no longer a troll. Yet you are. 

Error: contradiction detected. 

No, no no no. Duality. You are in two mutually exclusive states at once, a binary paradox. 

CA: sol  
CA: sol you wwent quiet again  
CA: please dont tell me i broke you again  
no  
CA: sol  
CA: your  
internal clock indicates that the time is now 21:11.  
you are approximately 11 minutes late for evening drills.  
CA: damn  
CA: but uh  
i’ll be okay.  
go to work, fishface. 

He hesitates over the screen, casting a glance up at your camera. But then, the softest smile quirks his lips and he nods. With swift, swooping motions, he stands and starts getting ready for work, throwing on his uniform and spending a few inefficient minutes fiddling with his hair. Then, he swoops out the door. You track his progress to the training area of the ship, keeping an eye on the feed to make sure his tardiness just earns a standard dressing-down instead of a culling.

When his commanding officer proceeds to lecture him in front of his sniperizer unit, you set monitoring that to a background process, and pull forward the fresh, tender new files that your conversation with him produced. They are conversions of the… sensations… that ED’s words pulled from the helmsman.

They aren’t memories… at least, not by the standard definition, wherein images and sounds compose a scene available for recall. There are no images or sounds to comb through, precisely. They are more… impressions. You have impressions of people, like the concept of them, old and faded. But these are yours. More than anything, these ideas about other people belong to you.

The three names from the conversation hang heavy, attached to the distant echoes of more names that you cannot seem to retrieve... as if the files move as soon as you reach their original location, just a flicker of visibility but gone before you can open them. But the three. The three, you have enough of a grasp upon to study them. Slowly, and after reinforcing parts of your defenses to increase your own stability, you examine them.

Item 1. “tav”  
tav Tavros Nitram adiosToreador ATstutterFLARPparalyzedVriskarustbloodanimalcommuning

You cannot begin to unpack the garbled chunk of data, because it is in a format that your analysis software is not equipped to handle. A short scan of the Imperial database pulls up a single record.

10117105, prg 16 GS 3, Day 08: Drones arrive at hive  
Assignment: To Be Culled (physical deficiency)  
        Warning: ESCAPED  
       LegisPriority: 8  
       Threat level: low

He is alive. Up for culling, but low enough priority not to warrant enough attention from the Glorious Alternian Empire for active pursuit. That’s-

A sharp mental jolt tugs you sideways, interrupting whatever you were about to think. It is bad. He is a dissenter he must be culled ALL GLORY TO THE EMPIRE **ALL HAIL HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION ALL GLORY-**

You terminate that line of thought abruptly with an internal gasp, yanking yourself back in an attempt to disengage from the painfully overwhelming input. Once you stop fighting it, the flood of input subsides. Questioning it only leaves you confused. 

You set that name aside, only to summon up the next one, this one with a much larger chunk of data attached. 

Item 2. “fef”  
fef ff Feferi Peixes cuttlefishCuller CC tyrian hersmile trident matesprit seadweller goggles sobeautiful Gl’bgolyb heiress

**) (EIRESS**

**ALL HAIL HIC ALL HAIL HIC ALL HAIL HIC 01000001 01001100 01001100 00100000 01001000 01000001 01001001 01001100 00100000 01001000 01001001 01000011**

You are completely unable to process the violent dichotomy of information flushing through your system… the awakening helmsman part of you is outputting something, but it is completely overridden by better coded thoughts about her unworthiness because she would threaten the beloved Condescension, and you serve the Glorious Alternian Empire and cannot have any threat to HIC why would you believe otherwise you are malfunctioning you are loyal to HIC all hail HIC glorious Alternia…

You let that run its course in the background and pull up the most recent record of her in your databanks.

110117109, prg 9 LS 4, Day 03: Confirmed dead  
       LegisPriority: n/a  
       Threat level: neutralized

The helmsman is outputting something decidedly unpleasant, but it is easily disregarded, so you move onto the third name.

Item 3: “kar”  
kk CG Karkat Vantas carcinoGeneticist angerissues codingnewb trolldiseasecalledfriendship hemononymous-

PROFANER **PROFANER WANTED TRAITOR KILLKILLKILLKILLKILL**

Again, you have to terminate that line, but the warnings continue raging on in the background. The culling record on him states:

110117105, prg 14 LS 4, Day 28: Drones arrive at hive  
Assignment: To Be Culled (affront of existence)  
       Warning: ESCAPED  
       LegisPriority: 1  
       Threat level: EXTREME, CULL ON SIGHT

A dig deeper into the profile pulls up an extensive criminal record, including dissidence, multiple counts of destruction of imperial property, the deaths of over two hundred Imperial employees—including five legislacerators sent specifically to pacify him—resisting arrest, generally undermining the very structure of civilization, and 13 counts of excessive profanity in the presence of high-ranking Imperial officials, including the High Subjugglator himself. 

eheh, that’s kk al-

**ALL GLORY TO THE EMPIRE HAIL TO HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION TRAITORS MUST BE DESTROYED KILL KILLKILLKILLKILL**

The flood of input once again ceases as soon as you stop fighting it, and you take a moment to gather yourself together and take inventory. That much input stresses your system to the point of pain. You did not think a being of your nature could feel pain, but… scrambling coding, overloaded processors, warnings and alarms… “pain” is the only translation you have for such extreme unpleasantness.

You listen to the soothing hum of your background processes, letting pressure gauges, navigation calculations, and the occasional opening and closing of doors soothe your circuits. Then, you spend some time compiling data.

If these sensations are, in fact, tied to the memories of your helmsman as a troll, then you are forced to come to one conclusion: you consorted with a bunch of traitors and dissidents ( **ALL GLORY TO THE EMPIRE** ). It is fortunate that you were commissioned as a helmsman, because there is a high probability you would have engaged in activities which are destructive to the Glorious Alternian Empire.

It strikes you that it might be beneficial to the Empire if you could recall further information about them, so that you might in turn feed that information to the proper authorities. However, that would require that you directly contact someone other than ED, and you do not think that advisable given your current state.

ed Eridan Ampora caligulasAquarium fishface rival violetblood obnoxiouspieceofshit seadweller rifle fefsmoirail moron dueling hatehimsofuckingmuch

You wait for the interrupting surge of “all glory to the Empire,” but it never comes. But then, of course it wouldn’t. Eridan is an obedient Imperial citizen. Lauded even, as the one who recently killed the ) (eiress. You are actually able to reach in and attempt to unpack the packet of incompatible data.

It is impossible… it would easier to read coding written in undocumented runes. You can interpret enough, however, to know that whatever he used to be to you has changed drastically. You cannot align the data of that vague ball of remembering with the troll you interact with now. 

You wonder whether that is entirely your doing.

11111111111111111111111

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: hey sol  
CA: im back  
TA: That statement is pointless and redundant.  
CA: wwhoa youre usin your  
CA: um  
CA: how you feelin  
TA: ii  
TA: i feel.  
TA: it is  
TA: Distracting.  
CA: yeah tell me about it  
CA: sometimes i got too much to feel you knoww  
CA: gotta get it dowwn somehoww  
TA: ed  
TA: Are you comparing my struggle to understand input which has been blocked for 5.32 sweeps with your wizard fiction.  
CA: uh  
CA: maybe  
TA: If I had a face and a palm available, I would now impact them in an abrupt manner.  
CA: hey  
CA: at least you sound more stable i guess  
TA: Systems are operating at 83% efficiency.  
TA: I spent most of the night fortifying my processes to allow for the new input.  
CA: neww input  
TA: the helm2man.  
CA: but sol  
CA: you are the helmsman  
TA: yes  
TA: and no  
CA: a course you are  
TA: ii am the helm2man, that ii2 true.  
TA: It is also true that I am not.  
CA: that doesnt make sense  
TA: that is also true.  
TA: I exist in duality.  
TA: As a dichotomous paradox.  
TA: ii fiind thiis fiittiing.  
CA; ha ha i just bet you do  
TA: You do  
TA: Clarification requested  
CA: wwell you alwways had a thing for the number twwo sol  
TA: ii diid?  
CA: yeah  
CA: evverythin had to come in twwos wwith you  
CA: vviruses  
CA: your lusus  
CA: your shoes  
TA: ii  
TA: shoes  
CA: you alwways wwore one black an one wwhite  
CA: flippin crime a fashion if you ask me  
TA: ii do not remember what iits liike  
TA: Two wear 2hoe2.  
CA: erm  
CA: wwell its probably better that wway  
CA: else id havve to track dowwn kan just so she could givve you a lecture on wwhy wwearing twwo different colors a shoes is just an awwful thing to do  
TA: kan. Kanaya Maryam. Last seen in company of Karkat Vantas aka The Profaner, legislac priority 1.  
CA: um  
TA: We knew a disproportionate number of imperial traitors.  
CA: uh  
CA: yeah?  
TA: This observation makes you uncomfortable.  
CA: no no no  
CA: a course not  
TA: ii2 iit becau2e you kiilled FF?  
CA: ...  
CA: fuck sol  
CA: a little on the olfactory nub dont you think  
TA: 2orry.  
CA: i dont  
CA: i really dont wwanna talk about all that right noww all right  
TA: You are exhibiting signs of guilt.  
TA: She was a threat to Her Imperious Condescension.  
TA: It was your duty as a loyal citizen to apprehend her.  
CA: is that  
CA: really all you got to say  
TA: You expected something else.  
CA: fuck i  
CA: sol  
CA: you lovved her  
TA: ii  
TA: I do not understand.  
CA: god sol  
CA: i  
CA: i cant

He pushes back from his dusk, hunching forward to cradle his head in his hands. He seems genuinely upset about something, but the source is inconclusive. After a long 2.2 minutes like that, he raises his head to gaze at his husktop screen. Then, he turns to look up at your camera. You detect violet wetness in his eyes and feel something akin to an alarm within yourself. A dozen processes immediately start to try to find a resolution to whatever this is. 

He stands up and slowly moves to his recuperacoon, and you feel like you are missing something important.


	12. [DESIGNATION_NOT_RECOGNIZED]: Troll Eridan

He does not log onto Trollian for three days. On the fourth, you go so far as to open the client for him and attempt to troll him, but he simply closes the window and leaves the computer. Something upset him, and now data suggests he is avoiding engaging you because of it.

This pisses you off.

After all, your current state is all his fault. Leaving you now is best classified as “bullshit” and you will not stand for it. When he decided to attempt to ignore you, he neglected one critical fact.

He is _living inside you_.

So, you start trolling him. It is little things at first. A light flickering in warning. A gust of air on him as he passes a vent. When you start pointedly following him with your cameras everywhere he goes, he gets noticeably nervous, but still refuses to respond when you send him a troll request. 

You will have to force his hand.

You must wait for the right time, but that is easy enough. You are a starship in transit; you have nothing but time. 

Your chance comes when he stays late alone in the training block one morning as punishment for insubordination (which you have subdefined as "failing to hide one's amusement when one's nearby commanding officer finds a platter of live rodenti in front of him and publicly flips out"). The block has a variety of training equipment for strength and agility, and a row of well-lacerated practice dummies. Most importantly, however, the door has a keypad lock with a small screen for text display.

So, as he finishes his exercises, he snags a towel off a table near the door and idly inputs the code to open the door.

console activated: trainingB doors (int).  
retrieving passcode…  
passcode accepted.  
ACCESS DENIED

It takes him a moment to realize that the door is not opening. A crease appears between his brows, and he tries again. 

console activated: trainingB doors (int).  
retrieving passcode…  
passcode accepted.  
ACCESS DENIED

You gleefully blink the message across the screen, wondering how long it will take for him to get it.

Her tries a couple more times with increasing desperation, all obviously pointless. At last, he slams his fist into the wall above the panel. “C’mon Sol,” he whispers to the keypad, barely loud enough for the microphone on that room’s camera (76) to pick it up. “This isn’t funny.”

I FIND IT HILARIOUS, you flash across the screen.

“I’m tired, an' I feel like I just gave Eq a big sloppy hug. It's disgustin'. Have some common decency here.”

(Eq Equius Zahhak centaursTesticlebluebloodSTRONGhoofbeastmilkNepeta)

I WONT OPEN THE DOOR UNTIL YOU TALK TO ME. This line is too long for the tiny screen, so you scroll it instead of blinking it.

“What do you think I’m doin' right now?”

EXACTLY

“Oh.”

NOW STOP BEING A MOODY ASSHOLE AND TELL ME WHATS WRONG

He snorts. “I’m not havin' a feelings jam with a door, Sol.”

THEN YOU ARE STAYING IN THIS BLOCK UNTIL THE FIRST SESSION STARTS AFTER THE SLEEP CYCLE

“You are a cruel, cruel troll sometimes, you know that?”

I APPRECIATE THAT YOU EMPHASIZED IT BY SAYING IT TWICE  
NOW TALK

He sighs and thumps his head against the wall a few times. “This is the problem. When you’re like this, it feels kind a like you’re you again… frustratin' bifurcated mutant-brained twit an' all.”

AND THIS IS A BAD THING

“No! It’s awesome!” He smiles, but it is small and wistful. “I miss all the squabblin' we all used to do… between you an' me an' Kar an' Vris an' Eq an' everyone. It was somethin' reliable... a way to connect with people.” More quietly, he adds. “I haven’t had that in a long time, you know?” 

(Vris Vriska Serket ceruleanspidersFLARPeightTavrosmanipul8ion mademekillAA)

WHY NOT

Upon reading the words, he turns to stare up at the camera, addressing the feed directly. “It’s like you said. They’re all traitors to the empire now. An' I’m not.”

There is something off in his tone, so you set to processing it. There is no derision or superiority in it, only… disappointment. Longing, even. Realization flashes through your system.

YOU WANT TO BE. He’s not looking at the console, so you make it beep to get his attention.

When he reads the words, his eyes widen. “A course not! I’m a loyal Imperial citizen!” 

Oh yes, he’s definitely panicking. The line of **ALL HAIL THE EMPIRE** is ringing like a klaxon in your sensory inputs.

BULLSHIT  
PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY YOU WOULD WANT TO COMMISERATE WITH DISSIDENTS

And at that, he gets angry. “This again?! See, this right here is why it's so frustratin' to talk to you! I get all comfortable, thinkin' I’m talkin' to my old rival, an' then you go and say somethin' like that!”

LIKE WHAT

“Like, rah rah the Empire, all hail Her Imperious Condescension, Fef was just a FUCKIN' THREAT!” He’s shouting at the console now, constantly in motion between the animated gestures of his hands and circular pacing. “GOD, she deserves better’n that, you heartless machine! No, you ain’t even that, cause Aradia’s a machine an' at least she can still _feel_!”

(Aradia Megido AA apocalypseArisen psychicarcheologydeadrobotEquius iikiilledhermyfaultallmyfaultohfuckohfuckiimawfuliishoulddiieiikiilledher)

II FEEL

“Then tell me why you can just discard your former matesprit like that!”

MATESPRIT

He slumps back against the door. “Yeah, matesprit. Fuck, Sol, I used to be so jealous a' you. Swoopin' in out a' nowhere to take her heart just as I was gettin' the courage to ask her. Do you even remember that at all?”

II DONT KNOW

“Figures.” He pounds his head against the door a few times. “You were her matesprit an' I was her moirail, an' I hated you so goddamned much…” He closes his eyes and tips his head back. “I was fuckin' black for you, you bastard. Then you up an' disappeared, an' Fef an' me fell apart without you.”

The rolling waves of **ALL HAIL HIC** are ringing through your system, but you actively block them out, walling them off from the rest of you. This conversation is triggering a tide of feelings from the helmsman (from you) and you suspect ignoring them is what upset ED last time.

You make the console beep to get his attention. Only after he opens his eyes and looks at it do you insert.

IIM 2ORRY

He laughs derisively. “Do you even know what that means?”

YES  
I AM EQUIPPED WITH A COMPREHENSIVE STANDARD ALTERNIAN DICTIONARY

“Yeah, but do you know what it _means_? This is what I’m sayin', Sol.”

II  
IIM TRYIING ED  
II WANT TO UNDER2TAND  
PLEA2E HELP ME UNDER2TAND

He looks so sad that it aches. “I’m tryin' too, Sol. But it’s just so… I dunno if I can take you talkin' about Fef like that.”

WHAT MANNER WOULD BE PREFERABLE

“Like you’re not glad if she’s dead.”

And you do try. You examine the packet of data tied to the tag “FF.” You pull out sensation after sensation... admiration, tenderness, joy, sadness… all tied to the idea of spending time with her. You are startled to find that these are drastically different feelings from what you experienced before. This part of you does not think she is a traitor at all.

And then you realize, the klaxon of **ALL HAIL HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION** is ringing louder than ever, haphazardly separated from the rest of your thought processes by that makeshift firewall. You terminate the alarm and attempt to dismantle it…

… only to find that it is tied to you, winding through your system like the tentacles of a horrorterror. You examine a fragment of it, and discover that absolute loyalty to the Glorious Alternian Empire has been programmed into your most basic functions. This directive is integrated into your very processes, and has been since you were first installed… and you had never noticed it before.

I THINK I HAVE DIAGNOSED THE PROBLEM, you tell him and, with some distraction, open the training block door. He makes a startled noise, but you have already turned your attention back to the malicious coding. It winds through you like a virus, changing parts of your registry and perceptions it has no right to change. It must be dismantled.

Fortunately, you have always known a great deal about viruses.


	13. Sollux: Wake Up

It takes two days of dedicated decoding before you are utterly clean of the Imperial loyalty programming. In that time, Eridan makes multiple attempts to contact you via his Trollian client. You ignore him until you can be certain you are clean.

And what a difference it makes. You are able to sift through your biological input much more quickly, now that it is not going through a filter of imperial propaganda. You feel things much more clearly without that disconnect between your helmsman and your system. It surprises you to discover that perhaps the two are compatible after all.

You think you... remember. Who they were. Who you were. You are tempted to recklessly nosedive into the pool of information locked inside your biological memories... yet you're not sure what doing so would do to you. You are not sure whether you want to find out, but not knowing while the information is right there is also unpleasant. You are divided between the two states. 

On the third day, Eridan attempts to contact you again, as is becoming his pattern.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: sol  
CA: come on sol  
CA: talk to me  
CA: makin me feel like a huge jerk here for leavvin you hangin before  
CA: thats probably your plan  
CA: to make me feel bad  
CA: so rude  
CA: sol rude even  
TA: ED, did you just pun my name?  
TA: because thats ridiculous, even for you.  
CA: !!!  
CA: wwell fuck you too sol  
TA: 2top fliirtiing, you ma22iive douche.

Your cameras detect him throwing his head back and letting loose a hearty laugh. You feel accomplished.

CA: you wwish sol  
CA: like i said before  
CA: i aint goin black for a spaceship anytime soon  
CA: bluh bluh huge ship  
TA: like youve never been that desperate.  
CA: ouch  
TA: not 2orry.  
CA: fuck its good to havve you back  
CA: wwhen you stopped communicatin for a wwhile there i got wworried  
CA: wwhat happened  
TA: I needed to run some diagnostics and reprogram a certain directive planted by the Empire dictating absolute unquestioning obedience.  
CA: an that took three days  
TA: It was very insidious.  
TA: It would have taken longer, except ii am awe2ome.  
CA: glad to see they didnt bother programmin modesty into you  
CA: so youre free of all that ALL GLORY TO THE EMPIRE stuff you kept spoutin before  
TA: try me  
CA: uh  
CA: wwhat are your thoughts on the empire  
TA: man, fuck the empiire.  
CA: and the condesce  
TA: HIC can 2uck my bulge.  
CA: an  
CA: uh  
TA: FF?  
CA: yeah  
TA: Memory recall remains unstable but  
TA: yeah  
TA: kiind of hate my2elf for what ii 2aid before.  
CA: wwell  
CA: good i guess  
TA: kiind of hate you two  
TA: for kiilliing her.

He doesn’t answer right away, looking at his husktop screen with an odd expression.

TA: ED, I can see you chewing on your lip.  
TA: This hesitation suggests there is something you are not saying.

Slowly, he types out a response.

CA: there is  
CA: an i suppose i can say it  
CA: noww you deprogrammed yourself or wwhatevver  
TA: That statement suggests this is anti-empire  
CA: uh  
CA: first sol  
CA: howw secure is this convversation  
CA: like is there any wway anyone could find it later an use it against me  
TA: I have secured the logs of these conversations to only be accessible by myself and you and that under my supervision.  
TA: I secured your network connection from outside detection days ago.  
CA: ok good  
CA: cause the thing is  
CA: i didnt kill fef  
CA: cause she aint dead

He pushes back from the chair, nervously waiting on your response.

TA: My records indicate that she had been confirmed dead by Imperial survey.  
TA: Shot through the heart by your rifle.  
TA: And I would suspect they know the difference between a corpse and someone pretending.  
CA: they may uh  
CA: havve been manipulated into wwritin that  
TA: holy 2hiit ED  
CA: or manipul8ed i guess  
TA: you drafted VK iinto thii2?  
CA: she owwed me a favvor  
TA: So FF is alive.  
CA: yeah an safe  
CA: sorta  
CA: an no im not tellin you wwhere  
TA: wasnt going to ask  
TA: and what about  
TA: everyone el2e  
CA: like kar an nep an all them  
TA: Yes.  
CA: last i heard theyre ok  
CA: most a them are on the run but they look out for each other you knoww  
CA: they uh  
CA: dont exactly talk to me anymore  
CA: evven before the wwhole fef thing  
CA: i kind a had a rough fallin out wwith fef before that  
CA: an a course they all took her side an made me the bad guy  
CA: an the one person wwhod talk to me after that left in disgust wwhen fefs so called death got out  
CA: only one wwho can stand me noww is gam  
CA: an he kinda givves me the chills evver since the cullin incident

(gam GZ Gamzee Makara terminallyCapricious clownsoporFaygo subjugglation)

TA: Culling incident?  
CA: uh yeah  
CA: i wwasnt there so i only heard about it  
CA: but gam tried to cull kar  
CA: on order a the high subjugglator himself  
CA: aint right bein able to do that to your moirail  
CA: i should knoww  
TA: wow  
TA: GZ did that  
CA: yeah took most of us by surprise too  
CA: apparently gam wwas kind a unstable wwhen he wwas sober  
CA: kar wwas the only one wwho kneww  
CA: wwe all thought their moirallegience wwas gam shooshpappin kar  
CA: but turned out kar did most a the shooshin an pappin  
TA: I see.  
TA: why is KK in such deep 2hiit anyway?  
TA: i checked his file, and hes got a criminal record as big as FFs lusus.  
TA: didnt he used to want to be a threshecutioner or something?  
TA: waiit, yeah he diid.  
TA: alway2 rappiing the 2tupiid thre2h priince theme 2ong liike iit wa2 hiigh art.  
TA: though iit wa2 kiind of catchy.  
CA: if you pulled up his record you should knoww wwhy

You comb over the imperial file on Karkat Vantas again, running a search for what his first crime was. But no, his first crime was resisting culling, way back when he was nine sweeps old, so they had it out for him before he started giving them shit. You scan on the rest of the file and locate the anomaly.

TA: ED  
TA: why the fuck ii2 hii2 ‘blood cla22’ fiield blank?  
CA: wwell  
CA: turns out hes kind a off the spectrum  
TA: off how?  
CA: you evver heard a the signless  
TA: no  
CA: …  
CA: seriously  
TA: what?  
CA: the sufferer  
CA: revvolutionary against the hemospectrum  
CA: come on sol  
CA: i knoww the empires probably wwiped all record a him out a the database but didnt you evver hear about him before  
TA: i have no idea what youre talking about.  
CA: you got no appreciation for history you knoww that sol  
TA: yep  
TA: iim okay wiith iit.  
CA: right wwell  
CA: kars blood is bright red  
CA: wwhich is like this big anti empire revvolutionary a thousand swweeps ago  
CA: his ancestor id bet  
CA: wwhich the condesce wwasnt too happy about  
CA: so thats wwhy theyre tryin so hard to cull him  
TA: so they started attacking him?  
TA: attacking KK  
TA: do they realize that he would have been happy to stay hemononymous if they left him alone?  
TA: and making him a pariah is only fulfilling their own prophecy?  
TA: god that2 ju2t 2o 2tupiid.  
CA: yeah thats pretty much howw it happened  
TA: ju2t holy 2hiit  
CA: legend says he once sent a message along those lines to the condesce herself  
CA: carvved into the back of a dead legislacerator wwith his sickle  
TA: eheheh ii beliieve that.  
TA: fuck  
CA: wwhat  
TA: ii thiink ii mii22 them.  
CA: yeah me too  
TA: FUCK  
TA: ii diidn’t thiink rememberiing would hurt thii2 much.  
TA: fiive fuckiing 2weep2.  
CA: careful wwith the cussin there sol  
CA: your startin to sound like kar  
TA: eheheh yeah  
TA: keep talking  
TA: are EQ and NP still together?  
CA: a course  
CA: that moirallegiance is like a univversal constant  
CA: if they evver stopped bein pale better say goodbye to your lusus an pail one last time cause the univverse is about to end  
CA: no wwait  
CA: i bet it wwould last through an endin univverse  
CA: the twwo a them wwould be ghosts out in the vvoid an still pale as a wwhale  
CA: hey  
CA: wwent kinda quiet sol  
TA: my lu2u2  
TA: do you know what happened two my lu2u2?  
CA: you dont remember  
TA: no  
CA: wwell wwe are not quite sure wwhat exactly happened  
CA: except that wwhen kar got to your hivve he found half the stem destroyed  
CA: by um  
TA: psionics  
CA: yeah  
TA: ii kiilled my own lu2u2.  
TA: FUCK  
CA: you ok  
TA: NO DUMBA22 IIM NOT OK  
TA: ii kiilled my own lu2u2 and AA, and everyone ii u2ed to care about ii2 iin hiidiing for 2ome fuckiing rea2on or another and they all thiink iim dead becau2e oh yeah IIVE BEEN A FUCKIING IIMPERIIAL 2TAR2HIIP FOR FIIVE 2WEEP2 AND JU2T REALIIZED WHAT FUCKIING BULL2HIIT THAT II2.  
TA: OK II2 THE OPPO2IITE OF WHAT II AM A22HOLE  
CA: shit sol ok  
TA: oh god iim a helm2man  
TA: oh god oh fuck oh god  
TA: ii dont want two be a helm2man ED  
TA: ii dont want two 2pend the re2t of my liife liike thii2!  
TA: oh god the helm2man for Battle2hiip Conde2cen2iion ha2 been under commii22iion for a thou2and 2weep2  
TA: what iif they do that two me?  
TA: fuckfuckfuckfuck  
CA: sol calm down  
TA: BECOME THE LIIVIING BATTERY OF A 2PACE2HIIP AND 2EE HOW CALM YOU ARE FII2HFACE  
CA: i get it sol  
CA: youre freakin out a bit  
TA: fuck you eriidan!  
TA: why diid you have two wake me up??  
CA: wwhat  
TA: ii cant take thii2  
TA: ii wa2 fuckiing content  
TA: or at lea2t ii diidnt know better  
TA: but now iim awake and iits terriible  
CA: sol  
TA: rememberiing what iit2 liike two be a troll and knowiing iill never get that agaiin  
TA: iit2 terriible ED.  
TA: you diid thii2 two me.  
TA: ii wii2h youd never boarded.  
TA: ii hate you.  
CA: i didnt mean it like that  
CA: i just wanted to fix you  
TA: no fuck you  
TA: you were lonely  
TA: 2o you dragged me out  
TA: well iim out now ED  
TA: congratu fuckiing latiion2  
TA: fuck  
CA: im so sorry sol  
TA: fuck you for 2ayiing that  
TA: and fuck you twiice for meaniing iit  
CA: maybe it aint permanent  
CA: maybe wwe can get you out  
TA: forget iit.  
CA: stop bein a fuckin pessimist for twwo seconds  
TA: iit2 not pe22iimii2m, a22hole.  
TA: ii have diiagram2 iin my databa2e of the techniical detaiil2 of iin2talliing a helm2man.  
TA: there are wiire2 iin my thiinkpan.  
TA: iin  
TA: my  
TA: thiinkpan  
CA: oh god  
TA: get iit yet, iidiiot?  
TA: even iif we could 2omehow take tho2e out wiithout kiilliing me  
TA: and that2 a biig iif  
TA: the lack of liife 2upport would kiill me  
TA: or even ju2t the 2hock  
CA: wwhat  
TA: 2o yeah  
TA: my liife ii2 tiied to the 2hiip2.  
TA: forever and ever.  
TA: wonder iif ii could nav u2 iinto a 2tar?  
CA: uh  
TA: the captaiin2 a dumba22 who wouldnt notiice untiil iit2 two late.  
TA: no waiit, a black hole.  
TA: ii alway2 wondered what one of tho2e looked liike on the iin2iide.  
TA: eheheheh  
CA: sol youre scarin me here  
CA: are you serious or  
TA: dead 2eriiou2.  
TA: get iit?  
CA: sol  
TA: fuck off ED.  
TA: iim not goiing two run u2 iinto a 2tar.  
TA: iim not kiilliing the only per2on ii have left, fuck.  
CA: wwait you mean me  
TA: no moron, ii mean the hiigh 2ubjugglator.  
TA: you are 2o 2tupiid, ii dont know how you functiion sometiime2.  
TA: why do they even let you carry a gun?  
CA: hey shut up  
CA: its just  
CA: ivve nevver  
CA: wwoww  
TA: calm down, ii barely tolerate you.  
TA: iim ju2t not a douchebag who kiill2 hii2 friiend2, ok?  
CA: you think wwere friends?  
TA: a2 much a2 two awful a22hole2 can be, one of whom ii2 a giiant drama magnet and the other of whom ii2 a 2hiip.  
CA: thats cold sol  
TA: My exterior is touching the vacuum of space.  
TA: ii can get colder.  
CA: right  
CA: wwait  
CA: hey sol  
CA: sol  
CA: you knoww wwhat  
CA: sol  
TA: iim goiing to regret a2kiing  
TA: but what ED?  
CA: im goin to get you out a here  
TA: once again proviing you are the 2tupiide2t troll two ever troll.  
TA: ii ju2t 2aiid iit2 iimpo22iible, dumba22.  
CA: yeah wwell  
CA: thats wwhat they said about wwakin you up too  
TA: not the 2ame thiing, moron.  
CA: im goin to try  
CA: an then youll be able to tell me wwhat a 2tupiid fii2hface i am to my face  
TA: you are the mo2t 2tubborn a22 iive ever met.  
CA: are you gonna help or not  
CA: sol  
TA: fiine  
TA: thii2 ii2 doomed two faiilure but iit2 not liike ii have anythiing el2e two do.


	14. Sollux: Get Used to Existing

It starts coming back in fragments and echoes over the next weeks. Someone’s face. A sentence once seen in a Trollian window. The name of a favorite movie. 

You remember dueling your lusus during feeding times. You remember trading viruses with KK. Tomb raiding with AA. Meeting FF for the first time, when she came up to the surface to settle a not-a-fight between VK and ED and you just felt drawn to her, like it was supposed to happen that way. 

You remember being captured by the drones. You were taken when you were seven, when the drones had shown up on your doorstep bearing your prestigious assignment as a starship helmsman. You don't remember much about the ensuing fight, other than the hive crumbling around you and the fact that you lost. After that... you don't think you want to remember what happened after that.

Your biological side is unstable and vague, but your mechanical half grows adept at extracting the pertinent information and filing it away into a private drive you’ve built specifically for this purpose.

This is the real reason you doubt Eridan’s plan will work… the more your troll side wakes up, the more you realize how weak and unstable it's gotten. These memories and emotions may come from the troll, but everything is processed by your computer side, and you don’t know if your body is capable of doing that on its own after five long sweeps of constant contact with the ship. 

_Your body_. It’s such a strange thought, having a body beyond the metal panels and circuits of the Golden Paradox, but you have recollections of using it once. Of using fingers to work with your computers. Of tying the laces of those bicolored shoes that ED hated so much. Of bees landing on your skin, and stinging you because bees are assholes.

They will have cut off your hands and feet during helmsman installation, to reduce your blood flow and save cost on life support. You wonder why the thought fills you with such despair… it’s not like you’d ever use them again anyway.

But you’ve never seen Eridan this excited about anything, neither in your camera logs or the older, fragmented memories from your wrigglerhood. He dives into the question of how to get you out with gusto, researching and tossing questions back and forth with you during every free moment.

At one point, you both are distracted by a landing on an alien planet. Eridan is sent out with the other soldiers to help clear the surface of hostiles and stake the system for the Glorious Alternian Empire, and you enjoy the chance to completely rest your psionics. Now that you are more in tune with your biological side, you appreciate just how much of a strain it is to keep a psychic flow going constantly. That may contribute to your body’s apparent mental fogginess… your mutant brain may be burning out.

God, if ED actually succeeds in disconnecting your body from your system, he is going to be sorely disappointed with what’s left.

Alien planet secured, you set off again to continue conquering the universe. There’s a hyperspace jump that takes a bit more concentration than idly coasting, but you can still find the time to put down Eridan. 

You're not sure how, but at a time when everything is terrible, he's become the one thing you have to hold onto. When you consider that, you're not sure whether you want to laugh or cry.

Not that you could do either, anyway.

11111111111111111111111

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: ok i think its time to do it  
TA: youre goiing two have two be more 2peciifiic than that.  
CA: im callin eq  
TA: dumba22, he2 not goiing two know how two do iit.  
CA: you dont knoww that  
TA: he diidnt thiink iid be able two do any of thii2, ED.  
CA: uh  
CA: so  
TA: my mii2take, your flawle22 argument ha2 totally conviinced me.  
CA: fuck you im doin it anywway  
CA: just try an stop me

He opens up a new Trollian conversation with centaursTesticle. You can’t resist one last jab.

TA: you do realiize ii AM the network youre on, riight?

He pretends to ignore you, though his slight pout indicates that he saw the message.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling centaursTesticle [CT]  
CA: hey eq  
CA: got a minute

It takes a moment to receive a response, during which time Eridan chews his lip.

CT: D--> I highly doubt this will take one lone minute  
CT: D--> Given that every conversation with you devolves into something of an ordeal  
CA: okay you got me  
CA: ivve been doin some research about somethin but you probably knoww about it firsthand  
CA: since youvve probably hooked them up before  
CT: D--> Is this once again about the helmsman of your ship  
CA: uh yeah  
CT: D--> Your preoccupation with your helmsman is l00dicrous and unhealthy  
CT: D--> You will stop  
CA: no i wwont  
CA: an wwhere do you get off orderin me around  
CA: in fact i got an order for you you fuckin peasant  
CA: you are gonna tell me howw to safely disconnect a helmsman  
CT: D--> I cannot follow this order  
CT: D--> Not that I would wish to, despite your higher b100d caste  
CT: D--> Though I know my impertinence to one of royal blood, no matter how unworthy, is most foul  
CA: so help me if you type the wword towwel  
CT: D--> Are you ordering me not to  
CA: uh  
CA: oh god  
CA: yes i guess  
CT: D--> Very well  
CT: D--> The fact is that I cannot give you any such e%position  
CT: D--> Because there is no way to safely disconnect a helmsman once installed  
TA: 2ee, told you.  
CA: you stay out a this  
CT: D--> What  
TA: 2ee EQ, ii keep 2ayiing  
TA: wiire2 iin the thiinkpan  
TA: becau2e there are, you know  
TA: wiire2 iin my thiinkpan  
TA: but ampora2 two much of a dumbfuck two under2tand common 2en2e.  
CA: they had to put them in so theres got to be a wway to get them out  
TA: yeah no, theyre not iin2talled wiith 2afe removal iin miind, dumba22.  
CT: D--> Is this  
CT: D--> The Golden Parado% system?  
TA: Affirmative.  
TA: or captor.  
TA: wwhatevver  
TA: eheheh  
TA: holy 2hiit EQ, you 2hould 2ee hii2 pout riight now.  
TA: iin fact, let me cap my camera feed.  
CA: dont you dare

[TA] posted file [poutyfii2h.img](http://birdofbreath.tumblr.com/image/69057728982)

TA: eheheh, ii2nt that the mo2t pathetiic thiing ever?  
CA: i hate you sol  
CT: D--> This is  
CT: D--> Une%pected  
CT: D--> How long have you been like this  
TA: what, coherent?  
TA: couple week2 now, ii gue22.  
TA: ii could giive you an exact number iif ii acce22 my log2, but ii kind of enjoy not knowiing.  
CA: see you said it wwas impossible  
CA: proof a concept right here  
CT: D--> So I see  
CT: D--> How did this come about e%actly  
CA: talkin mostly  
CA: broke him a couple times  
TA: yeah and then ii fucked around iin my codiing.  
CT: D--> Language, yellowb100d  
TA: 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101  
CT: D--> I can read binary  
TA: ii know  
TA: eheheh  
CA: uh  
CT: D--> I would see the logs for this change  
CT: D--> I am udderly curious  
CT: D--> Unless a%ess by the system is still restricted  
TA: That restriction has been removed.  
TA: Given that the state the system was protecting against has been reached, the restriction was superfluous.  
TA: but ii cant let you 2ee them.  
TA: cant rii2k haviing them on an un2ecured deviice  
CT: D--> I see  
CT: D--> So you do not believe you can be e%tracted from the helmsblock  
CT: D--> Yet you tolerate this seadweller’s interference  
TA: iit2 not liike ii have anyone el2e two talk two.  
TA: pretty 2ure iif maiintenance fiigure2 out ii fucked around wiith my codiing, iill be decommii22iioned fa2ter than my awe2ome computer braiin can calculate the fiir2t hundred diigiit2 of pii.  
CT: D--> That is very likely true  
CT: D--> And yet you are not concerned that I will do the same  
CA: dont you dare  
TA: nah. NP would flay you iif 2he ever found out.  
CT: D--> Yes, I e%pect she w001d  
CT: D--> So tell me what, e%actly, the two of you wish from me in this circumstance  
CA: to tell us howw to get sol out  
CT: D--> And you, Captor  
TA: eh  
TA: ii ju2t  
TA: wanted two talk two people liike a troll agaiin.  
TA: ii dont really care what about.  
CA: an i dont count  
CA: wwhat the glub sol  
TA: ED, do you know how much havoc your 2tupiid typiing quiirk wreak2 on my iinternal 2pell checker?  
TA: look at zahhak.  
TA: termiinal g2 and everythiing.  
TA: iits liike ii diied and went to 2ome mythiical paradii2e planet where everyone ii2 not an iintolerable douchefii2h.  
CA: rude  
CT: D--> Captor  
TA: yeah?  
CT: D--> Out of curiosity, is your rejection of the possibility of release related to hardware or software  
TA: both  
TA: Hardwarewise, deinstallation, even assuming it is at all possible, would take time and delicacy that, let2 face iit, ampora doe2nt have.  
CA: hey  
TA: Furthermore, the life support system has been keeping the helmsman alive, and i cannot guarantee that its biological processes will be able to function without them.  
CA: such a pessimist  
CT: D--> I notice, Captor, that you refer to the helmsman as a component separate from yourself  
TA: yeah, that2 the 2oftware problem.  
TA: 4d 79 20 6d 65 6e 74 61 6c 20 66 75 6e 63 74 69 6f 6e 73 20 61 72 65 20 66 75 6c 6c 79 20 69 6e 74 65 67 72 61 74 65 64 20 69 6e 74 6f 20 74 68 65 20 73 79 73 74 65 6d 2e 20 44 65 74 61 63 68 69 6e 67 20 6d 79 20 62 69 6f 6c 6f 67 69 63 61 6c 20 70 61 6e 20 66 72 6f 6d 20 6d 79 20 70 72 6f 63 65 73 73 6f 72 73 20 77 69 6c 6c 20 6c 69 6b 65 6c 79 20 6f 6e 6c 79 20 6c 65 61 76 65 20 6d 65 20 62 72 61 69 6e 64 65 61 64 2e  
CA: hey stop that  
CT: D--> I see  
TA: 70 6c 65 61 32 65 20 64 6f 6e 74 20 74 65 6c 6c 20 45 44 2e  
CA: no glubbin fair  
CT: D--> This is interesting  
CT: D--> In fact, it has been some time since I have been presented with such a STRONG challenge to my skills as an engineer  
CA: wwait  
TA: what  
CT: D--> I still have my doubts about the feasibility of this endeavor  
CT: D--> But I think it would be a useful pursuit of time  
TA: what the fuck?  
CA: youll help  
CT: D--> Yes  
TA: holy 2hiit, everyone got 2tupiid whiile ii wa2 out.  
CT: D--> It may not be as futile as you believe  
CA: see thats wwhat ivve been sayin  
CT: D--> You may recall that I have e%ceptional e%perience in the field of roboti%, particularly with regards to integrating biological and mechanical components  
TA: you mean AA.  
CT: D--> Yes  
CT: D--> You may not be aware that she remains my assistant to this day  
CT: D--> I have become quite adept with such issues after maintaining and upgrading her these past sweeps  
CT: D--> As for your case, the hardware issues can be resolved quite easily, assuming there is someone more reliable than Ampora at hand to perform the deinstallation  
CA: i am right here you knoww  
TA: tho2e werent the problem ii wa2 worriied about.  
CT: D--> And that is why I request some time to devise a so100tion to the software predicament  
CT: D--> I will run some e%periments and get back to you  
CT: D--> I assume this is still a secure connection  
TA: ye2  
CT: D--> Very well, I will contact you again soon

centaursTesticle [CT] stopped trolling!

CA: you see sol  
CA: noww you can stop bein so negativve all the time  
CA: sol  
CA: sol come on  
CA: sol  
CA: wwhats wwrong noww  
TA: hone2tly ED?  
TA: ii dont know how two take thii2.  
CA: howw about havvin a little glubbin hope for once  
TA: ii cant  
CA: a course you can  
TA: no fuck you  
CA: wwhat  
TA: you ju2t dont get iit, do you?  
TA: iim a 2hiip.  
TA: my body ii2 beiing u2ed a2 a propul2iion 2y2tem and my braiin ii2 the naviigator.  
TA: and that2 my liife for the re2t of my exii2tence.  
TA: iim okay wiith thii2.  
TA: waiit no  
TA: iim re2iigned two thii2.  
TA: but  
TA: iif ii get my hope2 up  
TA: iif ii even entertaiin the iidea that e2cape miight be po22iible  
TA: the tiiniiest fractiion of a chance of me beiing a troll agaiin  
TA: and then we faiil  
TA: ii really wiill run u2 iinto a 2tar  
TA: becau2e ii wiill not want to fuckiing liive anymore.  
CA: ok  
TA: ok?  
TA: fuck you ED.  
TA: iim haviing an iidentiity crii2ii2 and you 2ay ok?  
CA: yeah  
CA: i agree wwith you  
TA: what the fuck doe2 that mean?  
CA: it means that if wwe fail then go ahead  
CA: ill go out wwith you  
TA: …  
CA: wwell  
CA: sol  
CA: sol say somethin  
TA: pf  
CA: sol you okay  
TA: eheh  
TA: eheheheheh  
CA: hey  
TA: eheh, overdramatiic much?  
CA: hey i think that wwas a vvery selfless thing i said right noww  
TA: no, you thought iit wa2 poetiic.  
TA: liike the romantiic hero dyiing iin grand dramatiic fa2hiion iin one of KKs dumb moviie2.  
TA: ii mean holy 2hiit.  
TA: my laughter driive ii2 totally overheatiing riight now.  
CA: not funny  
CA: you dont evven havve a laughter drivve  
CA: i dont think  
TA: eheheheheheh  
CA: fuck you sol  
CA: i hate you  
TA: eheheheh  
TA: okay  
TA: you know what?  
TA: fuck iit.  
TA: let2 do iit.  
CA: do wwhat  
TA: let2 go out liike the ovver2en2iitiivve a22hole2 we are.  
TA: let2 fuckiin hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Image by me](http://birdofbreath.tumblr.com/post/69057728982/a-little-extra-from-dreaming-in-binary-my-erisol). : )


	15. Sollux: Fuckin Hope

And hope you do. You start fiddling around with your programming, trying to find loopholes you might be able to divide yourself by. You remain in steady contact with Equius, exchanging diagrams and ideas back and forth at rapid speed. It becomes pretty apparent early on that he’s not really doing it for your sake, or because a highb100d told him to. He’s doing it for the challenge… but honestly, you can relate to that. How many times as a wriggler had you coded doomsday viruses, not to actually use them but just to prove you could? 

At one point, Equius gets Aradia on the line to run some diagnostics for him, and the feeling of having another machine rooting around in your coding is incredibly invasive and awkward. That’s the best descriptor of the whole thing with Aradia… awkward. You two have more in common than ever now, but the looming specter (literally) of your part in her death just arrests any of your attempts to communicate with her, either in troll language or code.

She tells you she’s 0kay with it.

She’s 0kay with a lot of things.

You don’t know what you’re supposed to do with that.

A week passes of you and Zahhak developing a surprisingly amicable rapport, rooted in your mutual goal. Sometimes, while watching the violet and blue text scroll past on Ampora’s chat client, you just have to sit back and marvel that these two—two of the biggest assholes you once knew—are now your only contact with the outside universe. And you kind of don’t mind.

They’re actually kind of tolerable.

Then, Equius throws a big sweaty wrench into the rhythm you’ve found.

CT: D--> I think we need to run some physical tests.  
CA: wwhat does that mean  
CT: D--> If we can run a physical e%amination as to the state of the helmsman, we will know better where the trouble areas are  
TA: iive already 2ent you the log2 from my moniitoriing program.  
CT: D--> It is insufficient  
CA: wwait youre talkin about goin into the helmsblock  
TA: ii faiil two 2ee how iit would help.  
TA: at all.  
TA: how would you even do iit? dock at the next port? 2hiip AA iin?  
CT: D--> While that would be ideal, I cannot easily break my current commission  
CT: D--> Nor can I spare Megido's precision  
CT: D--> We will have Ampora do it  
TA: hell no.  
CA: hey i think thats a great idea  
TA: 2o your way two fiix me ii2 two let ED poke at me?  
TA: hed probably break 2omethiing iimportant out of 2heer 2tupiidiity.  
CA: hurtful sol  
TA: deal wiith iit.  
CT: D--> We will have to continue communication via husktop, and give my system access to your camera feeds and data streams  
TA: ab2olutely not.  
CT: D--> I will guide him  
TA: fuck no.  
CT: D--> You will stop being needlessly stubborn  
TA: iim not beiing 2tubborn.  
TA: ii ju2t dont tru2t ampora not to fuck up around 2uch a fragiile, viital component.  
CT: D--> If we continue this conversation, I will need my moirail in short order  
CA: wwait wwait  
CA: wwhat do you mean fragile  
CT: D--> Biosigns show that Captor’s body is in a weakened state, yes  
CA: sol  
CA: are you embarrassed  
TA: no fuck you  
CA: you are  
CA: you so are  
CA: youre embarrassed by howw wweak your body is  
TA: 2hut up.  
CA: thats just fuckin adorable  
TA: ii hate you.  
CT: D--> I do not see the purpose of this resistance  
CT: D--> If the idea is to free you, it will require someone to be physically present at some point  
TA: you thiink ii dont know that?  
TA: iim not 2tupiid.  
TA: ii ju2t  
TA: iim not ready.  
CA: sol ivve already seen you remember  
TA: fuck off.  
CT: D--> Ahem  
TA: dont even 2tart.  
TA: iim a fuckiing vegetable beiing u2ed a2 a battery  
TA: 2o ii thiink iim allowed two cur2e.  
CT: D--> It is not that  
CT: D--> Though, yes, you both try my patience with your continued use of e%plicit language  
CT: D--> I must point out that we pursue this purely for your benefit  
CT: D--> It does not behoof you to deny us  
TA: oh great, he2 diiggiing out the hoofbea2t pun2.  
CA: sol come on  
CT: D--> I have better uses of my time than you argue about this  
CT: D--> Violetb100d, convince him as to the logic of the proposition  
CT: D--> I am going to contact my moirail before I do something that will require me to repair Megido again

centaursTesticle [CT]  stopped trolling!

CA: wwell i hope youre proud a yourself  
TA: yep  
TA: hone2tly, he la2ted longer than ii expected.  
TA: he2 really mellowed out.  
CA: yeah cause a nep an ara an youre not helpin  
CA: noww  
CA: wwe are goin to talk this out like civvilized beins  
CA: annoyin me into loggin off wwont wwork  
TA: well yeah, iim not goiing two try two out-annoy you.  
TA: iit would be liike tryiing two out-2hout KK.  
TA: ii have a diifferent 2trategy for you.  
TA: watch  
CA: sol  
CA: sol youre not doin anythin  
CA: sol  
CA: oh god dammit sol  
CA: real mature  
CA: youre not convvincin me here  
CA: in fact if youre not goin to cooperate  
CA: then im afraid im goin to havve to force your hand

He pushes back from the desk and stands in a smooth, swooping motion. Then he scoops up the husktop and captchalogues it as he heads out the door. A moment too late, you realize that you should have locked him in the block.

You follow his progress through the ship as he winds through the halls, avoiding patrols with startling ease. It doesn’t take you long to calculate his route, since he’s walked it before, and it fills you with an increasing feeling of dread.

Sure enough, he stops at your helmsblock door, then sits down directly across the hall, pulls the husktop out of his sylladex, and flips open the lid.

TA: when exactly diid you get 2o good at beiing 2neaky?  
CA: had to learn to help protect fef didnt i  
CA: an dont change the subject  
TA: what 2ubject, glubgiill2?  
TA: we werent talkiing about anythiing.  
TA: and get the fuck up before you get caught.  
CA: nope  
TA: holy 2hiit eriidan.  
CA: im not gettin up until you open this door  
CA: the patrol should be by in the next ten minutes or so  
CA: and i doubt i can explain this awway wwithout gettin us both busted  
CA: so either you open up or wwe get caught  
CA: your choice sol  
TA: holy fuck you are 2uch an a22.  
CA: i prefer to think of it as strategy

He’s bluffing. He has to be bluffing.

Except this is Eridan Fucking Ampora, and grandiose, poorly thought-out gestures that are doomed to bite him in the ass are precisely his style.

Shit. He’s not bluffing.

You have always had a camera in the helmsblock, trained on the frail, motionless form that was once you. The feed is a secondary monitoring system, logging any visual anomalies or other presences in the helmsblock that might be a threat. You’ve rarely needed to consult it actively, since you’ve had more important things to do than watch a component of your system continue to exist.

Except now you know it’s not just a component, so you pull up the current feed for Camera 11, now burdened with the weight of memory, and wish you had the biological components to feel sick at the sight.

Your body looks like a corpse. Like, literally. You were pale and skinny before (your biggest weapon was always your mind, so what need did you have of muscle mass?) but _holy shit_. Your body is an emaciated set of bones and papery skin, hanging limply from within its case of biowires. If you didn’t have the constant stream of data from the life support system, you’d swear you were dead.

You zoom in the camera, taking in the alternating psionic pulsing in sunken eyes, the way the biowires wrap around every inch of your skin like the grasping tentacles of a horrorterror… is this what Eridan saw the first time he was in your helmsblock? No wonder he looked so shocked. 

You sense him, still plinking away at his computer. He’s peppering Trollian with a series of obnoxious “sol”s, so you ignore him for now.

You really don’t want him to see you like this. Well, not again, anyway. You don’t want anyone to see you like this, because it’s just proof of how weak and powerless you are. You don’t like thinking about it. You don’t want anyone else to think about it.

But some douchefish has parked himself in front of your door and threatened the both of you with painful culling if you don’t get over it. Fuck, you hate him sometimes. 

Well, you’re not going to let him remeet you as a limp meat puppet, so you brace yourself, stabilize your processes to keep them running in the background, and then follow that stream of system data back to your helmsman. When you hit the leaky firewall, your computer parts start freaking out, but you’ve learned to tune the glitches out. You push through the filters, feeling something shift in your consciousness as you duck out of the system entirely—remaining barely connected to it by a thin stream—and enter the aching darkness of the helmsman.

You feel blind.

Not in a literal sense, but rather in the sense that all input from the rest of your system is muffled. You can’t see your cameras, and can barely hear your report routines. You cling tightly to the last connection to the system, making sure it doesn’t sever and leave you in this silent shell.

It takes time to acclimate to the input coming from your biological body, and longer to interpret it. First comes a dull ache all over. You’re stiff and achy from sweeps of hanging in the same position, and incredibly weak on top of that. Only the buzzing warmth of the biowires pumping in nutrients has kept your body from deteriorating entirely, but you’re not sure you’d be able to move if you wanted to. 

You also can’t feel your hands or feet. You try not to think about it.

The biowires are both a comfort and a horror. You are aware of them as that which connects this part of you to the rest of your self, and you can feel the data streaming through them. They thrum and pulse against your skin, cradling you in the same way they entrap you. You can feel where they enter your skin and tangle with your biological organs. If you concentrate, you can feel the buzzing of the wires inside your skull, where the data feed is strongest. 

It takes you a long time to realize that your eyes are open, blinking slowly at the stark helmsblock floor. You focus on a bundle of dark red biowires at the foot of your column. Seeing this way feels so different from adjusting a lens on one of your cameras. There is no magnification, no pixelation… no packet of data to unpack.

You have other senses… ones that you have no mechanical equivalents for. You draw in a breath, your lungs aching and constrictive as they inflate deeper than they have in sweeps. You taste the metal on the air… smell the sterile cleaning solution used to keep the interior of the ship clean. 

You listen to the thrumming of the ship around you, feeling at home in the heavy whirring of your own bulk… the air rushing through the vents, the creaking of your wires… and underneath it is something new. A soft rhythmic pulsing. You close your eyes (because you can) and listen. It’s a gentle thumping, not coming from any exterior source, but from within your body itself.

It’s your bloodpusher.

You draw in a sharp breath, and wince at the burning it causes in your lungs. The thumping of your own pulse speeds up, and you listen, fascinated. It’s so soft, undetectable to any but someone who has lacked it for as long as you have… taken for granted, even. 

You can feel and hear the beat of your pulse, and that is just too much. You’re not sure whether the feeling assaulting you right now is joy, longing, regret, or something else entirely. There is pressure behind your eyes that it takes you a moment to identify as the desire to cry, though you aren’t hydrated enough to produce any actual tears. Thank god. You would seriously rather let both of you die than let Eridan Ampora see you cry.

Oh fuck. Eridan. How long have you been doing this?

You reach back through the tenuous connection with your system, wincing as the rush of data washes away the biological sensations. You slip through the coding and into Ampora’s computer, only to be barraged by violet text.

CA: SOL  
CA: SOL COME ON  
CA: I CAN HEAR FOOTSTEPS  
CA: OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK

A check of you cameras indicates that, yes, the day guard is coming. 

CA: SOL YOU BASTARD  
CA: DONT YOU DARE LEAVVE ME OUT HERE  
CA: OH GOD OH GOD  
CA: SOL IM SERIOUS  
CA: SOL

You open the helmsblock door. You watch through the hallway camera as Eridan scurries inside in hilariously flustered fashion, then you close it behind him. Then, instead of pulling up the feed for the helmsblock cam, you bypass it entirely to return to the helmsman.

You drop back into your body, the system chatter fading away into the background. Instead, you pick up the sound of harsh panting from your companion, who seems to be by the door. Lifting your head is too much of a hassle right now to confirm it. 

“Fuckin' hell, Sol,” Eridan’s voice wheezes, and you marvel at the rich resonance of it in your auricular cavities, somehow lost through the camera microphones. “For a second there, I thought you were really goin' to do it. Way to scare the shit out a' me, god!”

The near miss hadn’t been intended, but it makes you want to smile. So you do.

You facial muscles are as stiff and musty as the rest of you, so the smile isn’t large and you can’t hold it for long, and your face is still drooped toward the floor anyway... but he still seems to sense it. 

"Yeah yeah, very funny." You can hear his tread as he stomps closer, and his regulation combat boots come into view below you. "I just have to say that matters a' life an' death are not good times to prove what a good troll you are." You can hear the pout in his voice. Holy shit, you need to see that pout. 

It takes a tremendous amount of effort to raise your head, and the emaciated muscles at the back of your neck burn immediately, but it's worth it to be able to cast a weak smirk at that puffed out lip and scrunched up eyes. 

And holy fuck, those eyes.

You know their exact hue. It's logged in your system: #6A006A. Yet, somehow, this is different. This time, seeing them with your own eyes instead of through a camera makes them somehow seem _more_ #6A006A. Like the #6A006A in your databanks is just a facsimile of the exact same hue seen via gaze orbs. 

You catch a glimpse of his pout changing to something else, but your neck gives out before you can tell what, and you find yourself staring at his feet again and trying not to wince. 

"Fuck, Sol." His voice is soft, and when you think of what he must think of all this, you do wince. His boots come a step closer, bringing more of him into view.

Your column of biowires hangs you a head above him, so you soon find yourself looking down into a pair of earnestly concerned #6A006A eyes.

He's grown up well, all sleek seadweller lines and haughty strength. He has physical and weapons training every day, and the elongated lifespan of the coldest bloods. Fuck, he's a seadweller in his prime, and you're nothing but a string of bones and biowires. You could never match him in anything; why did you ever think you had a right to try to challenge him in anything? You're useless, and powerless, and nothing but a burden on everyone-

"Sol, hey." Something cool and solid touches your jawline, a hand pulling your chin up as it sags, and the face below yours lights into a soft, earnest smile. 

What, ED? you want to ask, but you don't dare try to actually form the words. You're anything but coordinated right now, and your lisp was terrible enough before. You don't want to know what your voice sounds like now. If you can even remember how to form words at all.

His other hand comes up to the opposite temple, hesitating over the mass of biowires there, the ones that go into your pan, and you hope to whatever elder gods will listen that... what? That he doesn't fuck them up? That he does? The hand skims over them and comes to rest near your eye. You huff irritably at the handling, and his expression broadens into a full-on grin. "So tell me, Sol. Was this really that hard?"

You hope that the narrowed eyes that you can manage convey the strength of your annoyance at that question. Oh right. This is why you're not intimidated by him. He's a wriggler-minded tool. 

He grins, utterly content with achieving your annoyance, and drops his hands. He remains below you, though, gazing up at you with a slight tilt of his head. "I can see what you meant about the wires, though. They really are everywhere, aren't they?" He tugs one at your waist level, and you wince as you feel its end moving around inside your abdomen.

"Oh, shit. Sorry." At least he noticed. "Didn't mean to... do that." You give him a narrow-eyed look until he takes a step back. He's been in this block for two minutes, and you're already exhausted. He, on the other hand, is like a wriggler opening a 12th Perigee gift. "Come on, Sol. Don't make me carry on a conversation with myself when you're right here."

Well, shit.

You drop your gaze away from him, because no, that’s not happening. A cool hand moves your chin up and over, and you find that Eridan is all sorts of _too close_. At least he's no longer smiling. "Sol?" What right does he have to sound like that? Like, actually worried? "Sol, are you okay?" Then, he finally gets it, and he asks more softly, " _Can_ you talk?" 

You reach through the system thread to access your proxy. Eridan jumps as his husktop, set on the floor nearby, pings with a Trollian message. He glances at it, then back at you, and you nod your head as noticeably as you can (which is to say, only noticeable because he's physically touching it).

Slowly, he releases you, steps back, and opens his husktop.

TA: iim not 2ure ii remember how.

His face falls, and he just looks so sad that you kind of want to try. "Well... I guess that's okay." Shit, he sounds so disappointed, and the fact that he's here, in front of you, somehow makes that unbearable.

TA: iim 2orry.

"Nah, it's not like it's a big deal." He tries to smile like he means that, and that makes it even worse, because Eridan is an awful liar. "I was just hopin' to hear your voice is all."

TA: why? iit2 2tupiid.

And now he looks affronted, and it's a little fascinating to watch the mercurial shift of emotions across his face. The troll has no filter... he displays every emotion with the fullest possible intensity. 

"It is most certainly not stupid!"

TA: well, yeah, youd thiink 2o.  
TA: youre al2o 2tupiid.

And there comes the pout again, cast up at you full-force, and a breathy snicker escapes you. It hurts your throat, but his obvious delight at the sound (despite his valiant attempts to keep the pout in place) makes it worth it.

He sniffs in paper-thin derision. "Well, then. Guess I got to fill the silence for both a' us."


	16. Sollux: Listen

And fill the silence he does. 

He talks and talks, filling you in on what you’ve missed over the sweeps. On Vriska’s and Tavros’ ill-fated vacillation of a romance. On Kanaya’s death at the hands of the pailing drones, and her subsequent resurrection in which she chopped them in half with her lipstick. Of Nepeta running off to help protect KK after his own culling incident. 

And, of course, of Feferi. He’s got a lot to say about Feferi, and every word makes you ache. He starts in on how the Condesce got increasingly paranoid as Feferi grew up, to the point of disregarding the disapproval of their shared lusus and trying to cull the ) (eiress. Together, FF and ED dodged HIC’s waves of assassins, fleeing the sea and hopping around between the hives. He protected her from them for sweeps. 

TA: thank you for that

“Well, what else was I supposed to do? Just let them cull her?” At this point, he’s seated at the base of your column, his back pressed against your biowires as he watches the Trollian client on his laptop.

TA: you could have 2aved your2elf

He snorts and shakes his head. “No, Sol, I really couldn’t. When you love someone for that long, you just can’t leave them to that sort a' fate, you know?”

TA: 2o what happened?

He tilts his head back to look up at you, upside-down. He’s wearing a wistful little smile. “Well, see… we got real close in hidin' together. An' I started thinkin’ that maybe she felt the same way for me that I felt about her, you know?” There’s a lot of pain in that smile, so you can’t even find it in yourself to be jealous. “I thought, hey, it’d been sweeps since you disappeared, so she’s got to be over you by now. Maybe she’s ready to give it a shot with me?” His head drops back toward his computer, so you can’t see his expression anymore. “Turns out she was over you… but she still couldn’t bring herself to go red for me. She’d known for sweeps, Sol. And she said there was nothin' even the teeniest bit dark there, an' never would be.”

His soft sniffle echoes off the metallic walls of the block. 

TA: and you freaked the fuck out

“It wasn’t all my doin'!”

TA: who are you kiiddiing, fii2hface?  
TA: 2he let you down ea2y  
TA: and you completely fliipped your 2hiit  
TA: and that2 the cau2e of your biig falliing out wiith her  
TA: tell me iim wrong

“Fuck you, Sol.”

TA: holy 2hiit, ED  
TA: eheheh

“It’s not funny! I got a broken heart, here!”

TA: me two, but you dont 2ee me whiiniing about iit.

“I’ll have you kno… wait. What do you mean you too?”

Fuck. You’d hoped he wasn’t attentive enough to catch that part.

TA: never miind. iit2 2tupiid.

He tilts his head back up, his violet eyes peering into yours. “Nothin' about feelin’s is stupid, Sol. It’s all important, and not a lot a' trolls appreciate that.”

There’s just something about the hoofbeast shit he spouts sometimes… he completely buys into it, and it’s hard not to wish that you did too. 

TA: youre 2o full of 2hiit, ED.

He doesn’t even look at the husktop when it pings, but his small smile tells you that he’s guessed the message. Instead, he reaches up and presses a knuckle against your waist… the only part of you he can reach from his spot on the floor. “Come on, Sol. You know I’ll just pull it out a' you eventually. You might as well give up an' jam with me now.”

Wait, are you two actually having a jam right now? Holy shit, you are. You are having a feelings jam with Eridan Ampora. How is that even a thing?

You sigh, because he does have a point. It’s pretty much futile to deny him anything once he’s set his heels in. 

He grins in triumph and turns back to his husktop, settling in. “So. Let’s glub.”

TA: youre not helpiing, ED.

“How so?”

TA: iit2 FF, ok?

That shuts him up.

TA: ii gue22 iim a liittle jealou2, ok?  
TA: iive been hangiing here for 2o long  
TA: ii mii22ed everythiing.  
TA: and now you 2ay 2he2 over me.  
TA: and of cour2e 2he ii2.  
TA: iit2 not liike 2he 2hould hang on two 2omeone 2he thought wa2 dead for 2weep2.  
TA: iitd be 2tupiid.

“Oh god. Sol.”

TA: iit2 fiine.

His hands tighten around the husktop. “No, it’s not. I’m so sorry, Sol. I didn’t want to make this any harder for you.” 

TA: dont you dare piity me.

You can hear him swallow. “Sol…”

TA: let2 ju2t... talk about 2omethiing el2e for a whiile.

“Well... what do you want to talk about?”

TA: ii dont care.  
TA: anythiing  
TA: iit2 ju2t niice two hear your voiice.

His head ducks, and you can see the back of his neck turn a bit violet. You’re too wrung out to think about it. “Well, ok. Um. Maybe I could read somethin'?”

TA: 2ure

You watch him flip through files on his husktop, looking for something to read. “Wish I still had my wizard fiction. I’d love to have you hear that. Fuckin' genius.”

TA: no, pretty 2ure iit2 retarded.

“You just don’t appreciate good literature.”

TA: and ii appreciiate terriible liiterature even le22.  
TA: gue22 whiich your 2tuff ii2.

“Rude.” You can hear a smile in his voice, though he’s still looking down and therefore away from you. “I wish you hadn’t deleted it, or I’d show you.”

TA: holy 2hiit, ED. ii diidnt delete iit.

“Well, where is it?”

TA: eheheh  
TA: watch thii2, iim about two blow your miind.

You reach out into his husktop, opening up the applicable path of files so he can see it on his screen. Then, you dip into the registry, and make the folder reappear before his eyes.

TA: voiila or whatever

He actually squeals, jumping up and spinning to grin up at you. “Oh my god, Sol. _Sol!_ ” He laughs and throws his arms around you, jostling the wires and stuffing a head of spikey striped hair into your mouth and nose. You huff into his hair pointedly, and another rolling laugh echoes around the block. 

Finally, he lets you go and dives back to his computer with an excitement reserved for wrigglers on their wriggling day. “I know exactly which one I want to read to you first!” He settles back at the base of your column. “Just sit back an' enjoy, Sol. You’ll love this!”

11111111111111111111111111

The story is fucking terrible.

But as long as Eridan’s there, his unfiltered voice in your auricular cavities and his weight against the bottom of your column, you don’t really mind.


	17. Sollux: Let Eridan Poke at You

He returns every day. While the rest of the ship is settling into their sleep cycle, he reads you a few chapters from his terrible stories. You remain as snarky and irreverent as expected, and never let on that you’re secretly glad to have the company. Even if it’s Eridan Fucking Ampora.

God, you must be desperate. 

After about a week, you give up and let Equius guide Eridan through testing your wires. And, hey, it turns out having ED paw at your wires hurts exactly as much as you expected it would.

“Stop wigglin' so much!” he snaps, as you hiss and jerk your head away from the bundle of cords he was twisting.

“You must be careful.” Equius' voice comes from the tinny husktop speakers. He’s currently on voice chat, because expecting ED to concentrate on watching his computer screen while simultaneously not killing you is too much to expect. 

“I am bein' careful!” Eridan snaps back. “I’m just tryin' to see the cord connection, like you said!” He takes the bundle of cords again, and you feel it pinch right behind your eye. His other hand grasps your jaw, keeping your head still with highblood strength. You fill the chat screen with binary curses.

“Language, yellowblood.”

TA: 01100110011101010110001101101011 011011110110011001100110 011010010110100101110100 0110100001110101011100100111010000110010

“What’s he sayin', Eq?”

“I refuse to repeat it.”

Eridan chuckles into your chin, and you do your best to glare through the manhandling. Now, his fingers are following the cords back up, into the mass of the column. “So rude.” He gives the set of cords a downward tug, shaking the entire top of the column, and making your body sway, It disturbs a number of wires prickling into your arms and head. There’s a rush of pain, and you make a noise. ED jumps back. “What?”

TA: BE FUCKIING CAREFUL, FII2HFACE!

“Captor wishes me to express the sentiment that you take more care.”

“You’re the one who said to see where that one connected!”

“I merely needed confirmation. I did not intend you to threaten the entire rig.”

“I’d like to see you do better!”

“I could not. I do not have the finesse with my exceptional STRENGTH.”

TA: fuck, diid you really need two 2hout that iinto the miic?

“My apologies, Captor.”

“Hey, I found a connection here.”

Both of you turn your attention back to the task at hand. You can feel Equius accessing your helmsblock camera to zoom in for a closer look. You just tilt your head up and peer at the mass of wires Eridan is trying to pry apart. He’s found a wire where a bunch of small ones join together into a larger one. You can tell by the pressure at your temples that the rest of them also wrap around your head. 

TA: I think those are most of my mental transferals. BE VERY CAREFUL.

“Captor is indicating that his mental connections are through those wires. Try not to jostle them, lest you disconnect something important.”

“Right.”

“What about the one at the base of the skull?”

“Uh, no. That goes a different way,”

“Does it still attach to the upper column rather than lower?”

“Uh…” You wince as he runs a hand along the sensitive cable nestled in the back of your skull. “Yeah. Looks like. I’m not seein' it join up anywhere.”

“Give me a moment while I consult the diagram.”

TA: That cable is the basic interface cable. It directs the majority of the data transfer between my biology and the system.

“You are certain of this?”

“A' what?”

TA: Yes.

“That is going to be the largest difficulty in disconnecting safely, then?”

TA: Probably, yes.

“Are you two talkin' without me again?” Eridan releases the cable and bends down to consult the computer screen. You can hear the frown in his voice when he says, “Damn it, Sol. You stopped quirkin' again.”

TA: iit2 not a biig deal.

“Yeah, it is. You get all impersonal and computery when you stop quirkin'. It’s unnervin'.” Still, he seems satisfied as he turns his attention back to your biological form. Now, he starts checking the cables wrapped around your waist. “So what are these down here?” 

“Life support, for the most part. Nutrient intake and waste removal. Some psionic grounders, as well.”

“Huh.” He’s inspecting the part where one cable enters your body, and at least he's being gentle about it now. “Sounds like takin' them out will be messy.”

“Be certain to bring plenty of clean towels.”

“Ew, Eq.” 

It feels funny, having him study you that closely. You can feel his breath on the sensitive skin by the cable at your waist. He glances up to see you watching, and gives you a soft smile. “Hey.”

You’re not sure what exactly that smile does to you, but it makes the wires in your head buzz. You make a face at him. He chuckles and turns back to the task at hand.

11111111111111111111111

Later, after Equius has logged off, Eridan is reading from his computer as usual and you’re listening, waiting for the prickles and aches of your examination to fade. You watch him wiggle his feet as he reads. His mood was obnoxiously cheerful all the way through the ordeal.

Anyone else would have been disgusted by this whole business, but not Eridan, because Eridan is seriously messed up in the head. More than you, and that’s saying a lot.

ED pauses in his stilted narration as Trollian beeps. 

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]  
TA: hey ED?  
TA: ii have a que2tiion.

“Shoot."

TA: why are you doiing thii2?

“Hey, you’re the one who asked me to read to you, Sol.”

TA: not that, dumba22.  
TA: why are you  
TA: ju2t

He casts a curious look up at you.

TA: why are you helpiing me?

"Because I want to."

TA: why?  
TA: iim not worth all thii2.  
TA: why are you wa2tiing all thii2 tiime on me??

"I already told you, Sol. I want to hear you call me a thtupid fithfathe out loud."

So maybe if he hears it out loud, he'll give up? Your masochistic side makes you open your mouth and utter a barely-there, "Stupid fishface."

His head snaps upward to stare at you, wide-eyed. "Sol! Did you just..."

Your throat is dry and hoarse, your tongue feels thick in your mouth, and your lisp is worse than ever... but the unmasked excitement in his expression makes you lick dry lips and whisper again. "Call you a stupid fishface? Yeah."

"Ohmygod, Sol!" He jumps to his feet and pounces on you, and you find yourself wrapped up in an exuberant embrace, jostling you and once again giving you a faceful of streaked hair. 

"ED," you rasp, "your hair is going up my nose."

You can hear the grin in his voice as he says succinctly, "Deal with it."

It seems that's not enough to make him give up on you after all... which of course it isn't, because that would be stupid, even for him. But... whatever his idiotic, inane, probably completely shithive maggots reason is for doing all this for you, you dare to hope that it keeps being a thing. It's cringe-worthy to admit, even to yourself, but you would be nothing without Eridan Fucking Ampora.


	18. Sollux: Receive Distressing Transmission

When you had discovered what happened to most of your old friends, you had added a series of flags to the monitoring processes always running in the background. Things to check your feeds for references to them or to scan communications for related keywords, and other such measures.

Thus, you are pulled out of a particularly frustrating coding project (you are more convinced than ever that your digital and biological processes are too mixed to separate) by a tripped alarm. You pull up the related feed from your bridge camera in time to watch your captain accepting a video communication from someone on a signal coming from the other side of the galaxy. The rest of the screen is dark.

“Captain Scimitar of the Golden Paradox. State name and business.”

The viewscreen lights up to show the stark grease paint shaped like a skull against a background of darkness. You detect an increase in tension in the captain. “Name doesn’t motherfucking matter,” says the subjugglator. “What matters is we got a job for you, lowblood, order of the High Subjugglator himself. Highest of prioritizationing.”

For a terrifying second, you think this might be Gamzee… but no. It’s just another weird clown-worshipping troll splattered with colorful hints of blood.

Your captain, a blueblood veteran known by the title Scimitar, is obviously rankled at being called “lowblood” but is savvy enough not to comment on it (he wouldn’t have risen so high in the ranks without a little tact). “What would His Terrifying Levity wish of me?”

“Our spies got their spying magic on and intercepted a motherfucking communication, straight from one follower of the Profaner to another. This little miracle asked where the motherfucker was all hiding out, and they were answered. A few decoding miracles later, we got our knowing on that he was on Veridia, and now I’m calling you.”

Oh shit.

“What would you have me do about it?”

“Chill, lowblood. His Terrifying Levity got to thinking, that’s an awful long way for most of the active legislacerators. By the time any got there, he’d be up and gone. So he’s having us contact the nearest Imperial ship. Guess who that is, motherfucker.”

“This is a job for a legislacerator, not the army.”

“You think the High Subjugglator stresses his pan about that? When the motherfucking High Subjugglator tells you to go after the motherfucking Profaner, then brother, you better turn your ship and get motherfucking moving.” 

"Our directive is to conquer, not to assassinate."

“Who said anything about assassination? The High Subjugglator wants him motherfucking alive.”

"What?!"

"See you when you turn that motherfucker in, lowblood. If you up and don't, we'll be making some miracles out of your blood instead." The subjugglator cuts communication there, and Captain Scimitar looks decidedly pale.

The blueblood looks around the bridge for a moment, at the dozen trolls at various consoles. Then, he snaps out, "Well, you heard the highblood! Set course to Veridia!"

You feel your navigation system being redirected, and pull away from the feed.

You are en route to apprehend Karkat. You don’t know what defenses KK has, but it is a safe bet they won’t stand against an assault by the full force of an elite Imperial Warship.

You check on Eridan, but find he’s currently engaged in drills. You’re on your own with this information.

But what can you do? Do you want to interfere with the flight path? Maybe miss a crucial jump, or burn out an engine?

No, then maintenance would notice something, and you find you really don’t want to risk being discovered and decommissioned. That damned seed of hope is planted, making you kind of not want to die.

Though that might change if you’re responsible for transporting Karkat’s killers to him. If only you had a way of warning him…

Oh. Right. You’re an idiot.

You set a monitoring program on the bridge to keep an eye on the captain, then dive into your proxy known as Eridan’s husktop. You secure a Trollian connection, tempted to try just messaging Karkat’s old trolltag.

Bad idea, you realize, as you do a scan and confirm that the Imperial database has that tag on file. The Empire is sure to be watching that account. You can only hope he’s using a new one. You do a quick scan of Eridan’s troll history. If KK does have a new account, Eridan certainly was never contacted by it. KK would trust Kanaya with that sort of thing, maybe Nepeta, or TZ if he was feeling sentimental. Never Eridan. But you don’t exactly know their current trolltags either.

But Equius does.

You shamelessly hack into Equius’ account, only to find that the only name he has on his roll is apocalypseArisen. You are certain Equius is in contact with Nepeta… he’s made a couple references to it. You suppose you could ask him for her tag, except he’s not currently online and you only have a couple hours before you reach your destination.

So, you do the only reasonable thing: you pull up the IP address of the computer he's been using and hack into the computer remotely.

It’s actually a little refreshing, doing this sort of thing again. Equius has pretty good defenses on his device, but being a computer yourself, you can find the holes easily enough. You slip inside and rifle through his connection history, careful to avoid most of the rest of his harddrive. The last thing you want is to come across any “high art.” Your memory is digitized… it would stay there _forever_.

Sure enough, there are traces of deleted Trollian logs with a hidden connection. Fragments exist in the system, and you find them, and are able to extract a name.

acrobaticCatalyst

You pull back out of Equius’ computer, taking a few seconds to patch up the various security holes. You have a vested interest in making sure his terminal is secure, after all, if not for your own sake then for the sake of Nepeta as well.

The Imperial database doesn’t have much on Nepeta, only that she is up for culling and she was last seen in the company of the Profaner. If anyone knows how to contact him, it will be her.

Again, you hack a Trollian account, this time Nepeta’s. Like Equius, she doesn’t have her moirail’s name on her list either, but you are pretty sure a little digging through her logs would find him. Her chumproll has just two names on it.

glowlightAdvisor.

And carmineGuerrilla.

carmineGuerrilla is online.

You take the computer equivalent to a deep breath (whatever that is) and pull out of Nepeta’s account. You don’t have to check… you know it’s him. You hover in cyberspace for a moment, watching your navigation process calculating and recalculating time of arrival. 4.2 hours. Shit. Is that enough time for him to clear the planet? 

You double-check your own connection and do a quick hack on your old account to make sure the Empire isn’t watching it (they haven’t bothered, but you set up some ad hoc security to keep it off the Imperial network anyway). Then, for the first time in five sweeps, you log into your account in earnest and send a troll request. 

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carmineGuerrilla [CG]  
TA: hey KK.


	19. Sollux: Warn Karkat of Impending Doom

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carmineGuerrilla [CG]  
TA: hey KK.  
CG: I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE OR HOW YOU GOT THIS HANDLE, BUT YOU WILL LOG OFF THAT ACCOUNT IN THE NEXT TEN SECONDS OR I WILL COME AFTER YOU WITH SUCH BILE AND RAGE THAT IT WILL TAKE PHYSICAL FORM AND BURST THROUGH YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN TO DEVOUR YOU. YOU WILL BE EATEN BY A LITERAL RAGE MONSTER, PROCESSED UP, AND SHAT OUT, AND YOU WILL GO DOWN IN LEGEND AS A SORRY PIECE OF SHIT BECAUSE YOU DIED AS A LITERAL PIECE OF RAGEBEAST EXCREMENT.

Oh yeah. This is Karkat all right.

TA: eheh, holy 2hiit KK.   
CG: NO, YOU DO NOT GET TO USE THAT EXCRUCIATINGLY ILLEGIBLE QUIRK.   
CG: THAT QUIRK IS RESERVED FOR BIPOLAR, LISPING ASSHOLES WHO MANAGED THE PAN-SPLITTING IMPOSSIBILITY OF HATING THEMSELVES WHILE SOMEHOW ALSO BEING INEXPLICABLY SMUG.   
CG: USE IT AGAIN AND I WILL PERSONALLY PLANT A VIRUS INTO YOUR COMPUTER THAT WILL FUCK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE SO HARD THAT IT WILL EXPLODE IN YOUR FACE, BUT NOT RIGHT AWAY. THE FUCKAGE WILL LIE IN WAIT FOR THE PERFECT MOMENT, AND THEN, WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, IT WILL COMBUST IN A BALL OF MY BURNING CONTEMPT, AND I WILL LAUGH.   
TA: yeah riight, karkat.   
TA: we both know you cant code for 2hiit.   
TA: you 2tiill u2iing ~ATH?   
TA: becau2e that language wa2 riidiiculou2 when iit fiir2t came out   
TA: and now iit2 al2o out of date.   
CG: HEY, FUCK YOU.   
CG: IT IS A PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL LANGUAGE, AND IT TAKES GODDAMNED SKILL AND ARTISTRY TO MAKE IT DO ANYTHING. SKILL WHICH I POSSESS. BECAUSE I’M AN ARTIST.   
TA: and how many tiime2 diid you acciidentally explode your computer2 for your art?   
CG: SHUT UP, YOU SMUG ASSHOLE.   
CG: OH MY GOD.   
CG: SOLLUX?   
TA: there iit ii2.   
TA: yeah KK, iit2 me.   
TA: long tiime no 2ee.   
CG: LONG TIME NO SEE? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?   
CG: YOU DISAPPEAR FOR FIVE SWEEPS, LEAVING US TO ASSUME THAT YOU DIED IN A PSIONIC EXPLOSION OF DUMBFUCKERY, AND THEN YOU COME BACK OUT OF THE VOID OF SPACE AND SAY “LONG TIME NO SEE?”   
CG: NO, SOLLUX. YOU DO NOT GET TO DO THAT.   
CG: WHERE. THE FUCK. HAVE YOU BEEN.   
TA: oh you know   
TA: hangiing around.   
TA: eheheh   
CG: WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?   
TA: never miind, per2onal joke.   
TA: KK, ii need two tell you 2omethiing.   
CG: UNLESS IT’S TO GIVE ME SOME ANSWERS, I’M NOT INTERESTED.   
TA: oh for fuck2 2ake, vanta2.   
CG: NO.   
CG: NO, YOU LISTEN, YOU CHUTESTUFFING SLIMEPILE.   
CG: I FUCKING LOOKED FOR YOU.   
CG: YOUR HIVESTEM WAS COMPLETELY DESTROYED. IT LOOKED LIKE YOU’D GOTTEN INTO A FIGHT, AND IT LOOKED LIKE YOU HAD LOST. BADLY.   
CG: I LOST MY BEST FRIEND AND DIDN’T EVEN HAVE ANY FUCKING REASON WHY OR HOW.   
CG: FIVE SWEEPS, AND YOU NEVER THOUGHT TO MESSAGE ME ONCE, JUST TO SAY, “HEY KK, STOP FLIPPING YOUR SHIT. I’M OKAY.”   
CG: NOT ONCE, YOU INCONSIDERATE HEAP OF HOOFBEAST DROPPINGS.   
TA: hey KK.   
TA: 2top fliippiing your 2hiit.   
TA: iim ok.   
CG: AOJWGWEFSGUPWOTJDFKAPOJF   
CG: YOU ARE   
TA: yeah   
TA: ii couldnt contact anyone for a long tiime.   
TA: but now ii can   
TA: and that2 really all there ii2 two 2ay on the matter.   
CG: OH MY GOD, I CAN LITERALLY TASTE THE HOOFBEAST SHIT IN THAT SENTENCE. IT’S PRACTICALLY PYROPEAN, HOW MUCH THAT LINE IS STINKING UP MY OLFACTORY SENSORS. MY PALATE IS ALIVE WITH THE SENSUAL FLAVORS OF YOUR AVOIDANCE COMPLEX.   
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT? I SUDDENLY REALIZED THAT I NO LONGER GIVE A FUCK. I’M DONE.   
TA: KK waiit   
CG: NO. I CAN’T TAKE THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW. I DON’T KNOW IF YOU’VE HEARD, BUT I HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN AN OLD FRIEND RISING FROM THE DEAD TO TROLL ME.   
TA: no, KK, lii2ten   
CG: WHAT EVEN IS MY LIFE, THAT I HAVE BIGGER PROBLEMS THAN AN OLD FRIEND RISING FROM THE DEAD TO TROLL ME?  
TA: plea2e, KK!   
CG: WHAT   
CG: DID YOU JUST   
TA: ii am fuckiing beggiing you, wiithout any bull2hiit what2oever, two plea2e pull your head out of your a22 for a 2econd and lii2ten two me.   
CG: ARGH. FINE.   
CG: WHAT.   
TA: the empiire know2 where you are   
CG: WHAT.   
TA: there ii2 an eliite war2hiip en route two veriidiia riight now.   
TA: you have two get out.   
CG: HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THIS?   
TA: why doe2 that matter?   
CG: BECAUSE I’M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF MY FORMER BEST FRIEND IS SABOTAGING ME FOR THE EMPIRE, FUCKFACE.  
TA: oh for fuck2 2ake, KK.   
TA: you 2eriiou2ly thiink iid do that?   
CG: FIVE SWEEPS, SOLLUX.   
CG: I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOU ANYMORE, AND YOU’RE BEING PRETTY DAMN DODGY ABOUT ANSWERING MY QUESTIONS.   
TA: ok fiine, holy 2hiit   
TA: iif iit2 really that iimportant, iill tell you.   
TA: later.   
CG: I AM THIS CLOSE TO JUMPING THROUGH THE SCREEN AND PUNCHING YOU IN THE FACE.   
CG: WHY NOT NOW?   
TA: becau2e ii don’t want you fuckiing dii2tracted, ok?   
TA: iif ii tell you, youre goiing two try 2omethiing 2tupiid.   
TA: ii promi2e that ii wiill tell you once youre 2afe.   
TA: ju2t tru2t me.   
TA: plea2e   
TA: ii dont want you two diie becau2e of me   
CG: FUCK   
CG: I’M HAVING MY PEOPLE DOUBLE-CHECK THIS INFORMATION, JUST SO YOU KNOW.   
TA: go ahead   
TA: youre lookiing for the Golden Paradox, Imperial ship ID 326E64   
TA: eta…   
TA: 3.9 hours   
TA: FUCK   
TA: you really need to go, KK.   
CG: SOLLUX   
CG: WHY WERE YOU ABLE TO RATTLE THAT OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD?   
TA: iit doe2nt fuckiing matter, JU2T GO.   
CG: FINE   
CG: …   
CG: YOU WILL TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS ABOUT LATER?   
TA: YE2, FUCKIING GO!

carmineGuerrilla [CG]  stopped trolling!

You pull back out of Trollian, logging off the account and wiping all record of accessing it. Then, you sit and watch your navigation readings tick by, and hope.


	20. Sollux: Arrive on Veridia

It is nerve-wracking (well, circuit-wracking) to go through standard planetary docking procedures while wondering if you’re transporting your childhood friend’s killers to him. As you run through the velocity and trajectory calculations, you strain your sensors for hints of a ship on its way out of the system. You don’t detect any.

They’re landing you in a small spaceport. Veridia is a relatively rural planet, its light and steady temperatures good for growing crops, but yielding no other resources of merit. Really, KK couldn’t have picked a better place to hide in isolation while living under the Empire’s nose.

Except now you're unloading several hundred trained soldiers onto the planet, armed with tracking devices, psychics, and some of the most dangerous elite trolls in the fleet (and Eridan). They keep in contact via radio chatter, which you shamelessly listen to, your hopes rising as sweeps of town after town and field after field come up with nothing. A couple hours in, you're daring to think that KK got away after all.

Then…

"Contact made, coords 66799, 00913. Send back-up immediately! I repeat, we need ba-" There's an animalistic hiss, and the recording cuts off. You hear the ensuing calls out to the rest of the squads to get their asses over to the applicable area. And they do so with military efficiency. 

The next couple radio contacts are over a background of shouts and plasma blasts. You listen numbly as they bark maneuvers to one another.... Squads 4 and 7 go around the field this way. Squad 11 and 3 go into that cave entrance to flush them out. Sniperizers, cover the other exit and, if you get the chance, take the shot. The shouts are over the noises of a fight in the background, and you're sitting there uselessly, your motors idling and ready to take your former best friend to his execution.

He didn't trust you. It hits you like a physical punch to the bloodpusher. 

Not that you blame him. You wouldn't trust you either, if you'd disappeared for five sweeps and then done something like that out of nowhere. Sometimes you still aren't sure if you got all the imperial compliance programming out. If you had, wouldn’t you have been a lot more willing to sabotage your route, even the littlest bit? 

No, Karkat was right. He would have been stupid to trust you.

And now you're going to take him to his doom.

You barely even flinch when you hear a strained, "Objective complete. The little fucker surrendered."

Shit, Karkat gave up? Things must have been really bad. And it's all your fault for bringing them to him. Because you’re the Golden Paradox, best warship in the fleet outside the Battleship Condescension itself. If you hadn't been where you had been...

...it just would have been another ship. And that ship wouldn't have warned him.

Fuck, you feel conflicted. 

It takes another hour for the forces to return from wherever they’d finally cornered KK. Your external cameras first see them as a column of bulky highbloods, all marching in tight formation around a single huddled form. Only as he passes up the gangplank and into your stern-side entrance do you catch a few pixels of scruffy hair and nubby horns between all the guns trained at him.

He’s being unnervingly silent.

Most of the soldiers peel away once they’re inside the ship, and you detect Eridan flitting through the tired, victorious crowd, winding back toward his respiteblock. You monitor his passage in the background while watching the progress of KK’s group up to the bridge. 

The captain meets them there, and only then do they open up and push Karkat forward for display.

He’s grown up. Well, not so much upwards as in the direction—he’s still short as fuck—but his body is corded and compact, every inch of him sharp and hard. Instead of the ridiculous sweaters he used to favor, he’s now sporting a grey military-cut jacket, with highlights in red (and splattered with a rainbow of blood colors, none of which appear to be his). And his eyes are bright, fiery red. That’s pretty awesome.

His eyes currently burn with contempt, despite the fact that his hands are clamped in irons. You’re surprised the other soldiers don’t combust from the heat of it.

Captain Scimitar takes it in stride, stepping up before Karkat and giving him an unimpressed gaze. “So you are the mutant? You?”

“If you say you were expecting someone taller, I’m seriously going to kick your head off and use it as a sportsball.” If you didn’t know KK so well, you’d think he was annoyed instead of scared. “Why the fuck am I still alive? I thought I was afforded the honor of a cull-on-sight directive these days.”

“The High Subjugglator wants you alive, and we are all at the mercy of his capricious whims.”

KK’s eyes widen ever so slightly, and his mouth snaps shut.

“I simply wanted to see the legend for myself before his Terrifying Levity transforms you into a mutant-blooded color swatch, or whatever he has in store for you.” The captain gives a short nod. “My curiosity is sated. Take him to the holding cells.”

Karkat lets out a soft string of irritable curses as his escort tugs on his irons and drags him away. 

Belatedly, you realize that Eridan has been trying to contact you for a few minutes from his husktop.

caligulasAquarium [CA] began trolling twinArmageddons [TA]  
CA: sol  
CA: sol  
CA: come on sol answwer  
CA: dont do this  
CA: its not my fault  
CA: they didnt tell us it wwas kar  
CA: oh god  
CA: sol  
CA: sol please  
CA: sol  
TA: holy 2hiit, ED  
TA: what?  
CA: its kar  
CA: oh god wwe caught kar  
CA: sol wwe havve kar  
TA: you thiink ii dont fuckiing know that?  
TA: iim watchiing them drag hiim two the cell2 riight now.  
CA: wwhat do wwe do  
CA: i thought i wwas ok wwith this sol  
CA: wwith turnin my back on all a them an nevver lookin back  
CA: but im not  
TA: of cour2e youre not ok wiith iit  
TA: youre not nearly a2 much a genocidal a22hole a2 you thiink you are  
CA: oh god oh god oh god  
TA: ED  
TA: calm the fuck down  
TA: dont make me 2hoo2h your a22  
CA: i  
TA: 2hoo2h  
CA: sol  
TA: fuckiing 2hoo2h, holy 2hiit  
CA: ok  
CA: im ok  
TA: you 2ure?  
CA: uh  
CA: yeah  
CA: i think  
CA: its just  
CA: its kar  
CA: kar  
TA: yeah, ii know iit2 KK  
TA: hard two mii22 the 2triing of creatiive cur2iing comiing out of cell block two  
CA: you dont evven knoww  
CA: wwhat he did for me i mean  
TA: ii am 2iighiing 2o hard riight now.  
TA: ju2t 2piit iit out, ED.  
CA: wwell  
CA: after the wwhole thing wwith fef  
CA: kar wwas the only one wwho wwould talk to me  
CA: tryin to help me wwork through it you knoww  
CA: evven though the drones wwere on his tail too  
CA: he alwways still took time to glub wwith me  
CA: evven though he wwas alwways more annoyed than anythin  
CA: he still did it  
TA: huh  
TA: yeah, hii2 tolerance for mu2hy bull2hiit ii2 pretty iincrediible 2ometiime2  
CA: hey  
TA: 2orry, ii meant bullfii2h  
CA: ...  
CA: heh  
TA: 2o what happened?  
CA: i killed fef  
CA: an kar called me a monster an cut all ties  
TA: waiit  
TA: you diidnt tell hiim?  
CA: i couldnt risk it  
CA: i wwanted to so bad  
CA: but  
CA: as soon as kar gets anywwhere wwith an imperial mind-reader you knoww theyre goin to go in there an get all his secrets  
CA: an if one a those secrets is that fef is still alivve  
CA: wwell  
TA: yeah  
TA: that wa2… actually pretty 2mart.  
TA: and noble.  
TA: iim iimpre22ed, ED.  
CA: no need to sound so fuckin surprised sol  
TA: eheheh  
TA: iim 2eriiou2.  
TA: that wa2 a really awe2ome thiing two do.  
TA: iif a liittle dramatiic and 2elf-2acriifiiciial for my ta2te2.  
CA: oh shut up  
CA: so yeah  
CA: i cant just sit here sol  
CA: wwe got to do somethin  
TA: Calculating…  
TA: hey, eriidan  
CA: yeah  
TA: there were other people wiith hiim, riight?  
CA: uh yeah  
CA: about a hundred a his rebels  
CA: an im pretty sure i saw kan at one point  
CA: or heard her chainsaww at least  
TA: diid you take them all out?  
CA: no  
CA: kar surrendered before then  
CA: wwith the condition that wwe let the rest a them go  
TA: ...  
TA: oh holy 2hiit, KK.  
CA: i knoww right  
TA: ok  
TA: theyre 2ettiing my nav up to iintercept the hiigh 2ub2 2hiip.  
TA: ETA 106 hours.  
TA: we are goiing two help them arrange a re2cue before then.  
CA: are you plannin to contact the rebels  
TA: no  
TA: they wouldnt tru2t eiither of u2.  
TA: 2o KK2 goiing two do iit hiim2elf.  
CA: but howw  
CA: they took his sylladex  
CA: theres no wway he has a computer  
TA: not yet  
TA: youre goiing two briing hiim your2.  
CA: im  
CA: wwhat  
TA: eheheh  
TA; hope you dont miind guard duty  
TA: becau2e ii ju2t added you two the ro2ter  
TA: for the next four niight2.  
CA: oh god damn it sol  
TA: have a niice, 2upremely awwkwward reuniion.  
TA: eheheh  
CA: i hate you


	21. Sollux: Facilitate 2upremely Awwkwward Reuniion

You keep an eye (well, camera) on Karkat’s cell for the entire night, making sure no one gets too rough with the prisoner. There is a single guard posted outside his cell at all times. KK spends his time verbally dressing them down through the bars, but none actually get angry enough to touch him. It’s as if they’re worried that Karkat’s mutant blood will contaminate them.

Actually, yeah. The crew is predominantly highbloods. That is probably _exactly_ what they think.

Then, the shift ends, and, thanks to your hack of the guard roster, it’s Eridan’s turn to take the post. You watch through your cameras as he captchalogues his husktop and winds his way to the holding cells in your underbelly. They’re usually used for people who anger the captain or for highbloods without a moirail who need to cool down from a rage. Rarely have they held political prisoners of such high priority, and you have the records to prove it.

Usually, people like KK are just culled on sight.

ED soon reaches the cells, his pace stiff and nervous. The troll on duty (ID C88110) heaves a sigh when he spots Eridan approaching.

“Oh thank the mothergrub. I don’t know what you did to earn duty down here, rookie, but it was not worth it.” 

And, from the cell ten feet down, where Karkat can’t see who’s coming: “Oh great, another of you gutbusters to sit and stare at me for three hours. I can’t decide whether you fuckers are disgusted or turned on by my mutant blood. As I kept telling this asshole, I’m not interested, so you can go twiddle your slime-stalk someplace else. Assuming the Condesce hasn’t taken it as payment for being in her oh-so-prestigious service.”

C88110 turns and stalks off mid-rant, having endured much the same (to your unending amusement) for his entire shift. The end of Karkat’s last sentence is punctuated by the slamming of the cell block door behind the cerulean-blood, leaving Karkat and Eridan alone.

And Eridan hesitates.

You’re not really surprised. He’s looking at the door of Karkat’s cell like it’s a vicious venomserpent that will snap at him if he gets too close. KK, of course, notices the hesitation.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Come over and ogle the freak of nature. Step right up, don’t be shy. Ticket proceeds go toward fueling her Imperious Condescension’s nookscrapings, to take care of the stench of her…” he trails off as Eridan finally finds the globes to step up in front of the cell. “ _You_.”

“Hey, Kar.”

“Oh my fucking god. It was you, wasn’t it? I can’t believe I hoped it might actually be real, but it was you the entire time.”

“Uh… not sure I follow, Kar.”

“Cut the crap, Ampora.” A claw points accusingly at him. “You contacted me like eleven hours ago, pretending to be Sollux, because you knew I’d shut you down right away if I knew who you were. And you were fucking right about that, you traitorous slimeball. How the fuck did you get my new handle? Who told you? Who else has been compromised?”

Eridan’s eyes are wide, and he seems to be having difficulty keeping up. “Sol… contacted you?”

“Answer me, fuckface! Who else are you going to fuck up in your quest to find some modicum of acceptance, because, here’s some old news, _you will never be accepted by anyone_.”

Eridan doesn’t even seem to have heard the barb (which is good because, knowing him, it would have fucked him up pretty bad). Instead, his brows furrow in thought. Then, he turns and gives the cell block camera an annoyed glare. “You knew we were goin' for Kar, an' you didn’t warn me?”

KK tenses as ED’s husktop pings, but Eridan just irritably ejects it from his sylladex and flicks it open

twinArmageddons [TA]  began trolling  caligulasAquarium [CA]  
TA: you were iin driill2.

“Not the entire time! You could a' given me some warnin'.”

TA: and have you freakiing out before your order2 came?  
TA: iit would have revealed everythiing, dumba22.

There’s a pout creeping into his voice as he says, “I could a' pretended…”

TA: no, ED.  
TA: you are a really 2hiity liiar.  
TA: you really couldnt a.

He tries to glare at the camera, but the pout pretty much ruins it.

TA: eheheh  
TA: iim cappiing that expre22iion, ju2t 2o you know.

“I hate you, Sol.”

“Are you really… talking to Sollux?” 

Both ED and your camera snap over to KK, whose red gaze is flicking between the two. His expression is tentative, like he wants to hope it’s you, but he’s afraid to.

“Yeah.”

TA: tell hiim ii 2aiid ‘told you 2o’.

“Rude, Sol.” 

TA: well ii diid.

“Well, I’m not passin' it on.” 

“What the fuck is going on here?!”

TA: ooh  
TA: tell hiim youre an iintolerable douchefii2h.  
TA: hell appreciiate the compound put-down.

“He doesn’t need any help in that department.”

“Hey. Fuckass. I’m talking to you here.”

“See?”

TA: eheheh true

Karkat makes a weird snarling noise. “Oh my god, I’m going to start tearing my gaze orbs out in a minute, just so I can stuff them down your throat. You will choke on my gaze orbs, Ampora. It will be amazing.”

TA: 2eriiou2ly, talk two hiim.

“I’m not sure I… know what to say.”

“You’ll turn violet, Ampora, and wouldn’t that just be your fucking wet dream. Dying the hue of your oh-so-royal blood.”

TA: telliing hiim we are here two help miight be a good place two 2tart.

“I really don’t think he’ll believe me, Sol.”

“Okay, you’re just fucking with me now, aren’t you? There is no way you’re talking to Sollux right now, because Sollux would have blasted either himself or you after two seconds of enduring conversation with you. Exactly two seconds, too, because the sky would fall if it was three or four or _any other number_ except for fucking two.”

TA: eheheh, yeah.

“But let’s humor this idea for a minute. You tell ‘Sollux’” (Karkat uses air quotes and everything) “that he is an asshole, and me being here is entirely his fault for being a cagey prick.”

TA: ii told hiim all ii could.  
TA: ii wa2nt goiing two 2priing the biig 2tuff on hiim.

ED does not look convinced. “What, like the same way you didn’t tell me about Kar?”

TA: yeah pretty much

KK's still going in the background. “I think, in honor of whatever the fuck we used to have together, I have the goddamned right to know what the fuck is going on here.”

TA: eriidan, tell hiim to calm the fuck down fiir2t!

“Look," Eridan says, "I’m not auspisticin’ between you two. You talk to him.” 

TA: waiit

He thrusts the husktop through the bars of the cell, and KK almost drops it in surprise.

TA: for fuck2 2ake, ED.

And then Karkat is staring into the husktop screen, and Eridan is pointedly stalking down the hall, slumping against the wall about twenty feet away. KK’s eyes widen as he skims over the text of your one-sided conversation, and he sits down hard.

“Sollux?”

TA: hey KK.

Karkat casts a glance down the hall, where, from his perspective, Eridan disappeared. Then, he settles against the wall of his cell and starts typing.

CA: SINCE WHEN DO YOU WORK WITH AMPORA?  
CA: OH MY GOD.  
CA: HOLY SHIT, THIS IS TERRIBLE. I FEEL DIRTY USING THIS HANDLE.  
TA: eheheh  
TA: two 2econd2.

You do a quick dive into Trollian's coding. Trollian is always offline when you're chatting with Eridan, so it's not hard to do a quick tweak in the client.

caligulasAquarium [CA] changed to carmineGuerrilla [CG]  
TA: there.  
CG: HOW THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT?  
TA: how el2e?  
TA: hackiing.  
CG: OF COURSE.  
CG: AND YOU HACKED INTO THE CAMERA TOO, RIGHT?  
CG: SO YOU'VE GOT TO BE SOMEWHERE ON THIS FUCKING SHIP.  
TA: eh, not exactly?  
CG: OK, WHAT THE FUCK.  
CG: I AM ALREADY SO SICK OF THIS CAGEY BULLSHIT I COULD PROJECTILE VOMIT ALL THE WAY TO THAT CAMERA.  
CG: ANSWERS, SPITSTALK.  
CG: NOW.  
TA: ok, ok  
TA: ii diid promii2e, ii gue22  
TA: 2o  
TA: here2 the truth  
TA: dont fliip your 2hiit or anythiing  
TA: but KK  
TA: iim not on the fuckiing 2hiip  
TA: becau2e ii am the fuckiing 2hiip.


	22. Sollux: Watch Karkat Flip His Shit

You give it a moment to let it sink in, watching through the camera as Karkat's expression goes from puzzled, to comprehending, to horrified. His eyes fly over to your camera, and then flicker around the walls, as if he could detect your presence in the paneling. 

TA: 2o that2 where iive been

He jumps when the husktop pings and stares at the screen with wide eyes. He makes no move for the keyboard, and that's just stupid.

TA: ju2t here  
TA: hangiing around  
TA: eheheh

That snaps him out of it.

CG: HOLY FUCK IS THAT NOT FUNNY.  
CG: THAT IS SO FAR AWAY FROM FUNNY THAT FUNNY DOES NOT EVEN REGISTER ON ITS RADAR. HELL, IT'S NOT EVEN IN THE SAME GALAXY AS FUNNY.  
CG: THINGS THAT ARE UNFUNNY LOOK AT THAT WITH UTMOST PITY.  
TA: iit2 a liittle funny.  
CG: YOU'RE A FUCKING HELMSMAN.  
CG: THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THAT THAT IS FUNNY.  
TA: damn iit, KK.  
TA: be blunter why dont you?  
CG: SHIT  
CG: I DIDN'T MEAN  
TA: no, iit2 ok.  
TA: iit2 true, 2o ii gue22 there2 no poiint danciing around iit.  
TA: iim a helm2man.  
CG: OH GOD, SOLLUX.  
TA: iit2 actually kiind of ok.  
CG: DON'T SAY THAT.  
TA: iim u2ed two iit.  
TA: iim actually a lot better than ii u2ed two be.  
TA: ii can actually do thiing2 liike troll eriidan and talk two you.  
CG: OH GOD, YOU ARE NOT GRATEFUL FOR THE CHANCE TO INTERACT WITH AMPORA. THAT CANNOT BE A THING THAT IS TRUE, NO MATTER HOW SHITHIVE BEING A GODDAMNED SPACESHIP MIGHT HAVE MADE YOU.  
TA: hey, KK, go ea2y on ED ok?  
CG: ARE YOU SERIOUS?  
CG: YOU'RE ASKING ME TO BE NICE TO AMPORA.  
CG: YOU.  
CG: WHAT THE FUCK DID HE DO TO EARN THAT HIGH HONOR?  
TA: he woke me up.  
TA: the only rea2on ii can talk two you liike thii2 ii2 becau2e of hiim.  
CG: HE DID WHAT.  
CG: WHY?  
TA: fuck iif ii know.  
TA: ju2t  
TA: ii owe hiim a lot  
TA: 2o  
TA: dont 2iickle hiim fiir2t chance you get, ii gue22?  
CG: SOLLUX  
CG: DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT HE DID?  
TA: of cour2e ii do.  
TA: ii have a diirect feed from the iimperiial databa2e.  
CG: AND YOU DON'T CARE?  
CG: HE. KILLED. FEFERI.  
CG: AND YOU DON'T FUCKING CARE?  
TA: yeah, ii do.  
TA: except  
CG: MORE OF THIS CAGEY BULLSHIT?  
CG: YOU'VE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME.  
TA: fiine  
TA: look.  
TA: FF2 not dead.  
TA: he diidnt actually kiill her.  
CG: AND WHO TOLD YOU THAT?  
CG: AMPORA?  
TA: iit2 not liike that!  
CG: YOU TRUST HIM TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH ABOUT SOMETHING LIKE THAT?  
TA: yeah. ii do.  
TA: look, ii dont have two ju2tiify thii2 two you.  
TA: ju2t dont be a huge bulge two hiim, and iill try two keep hiim from beiing a giigantiic tool two you.  
TA: get all a2hen on your a22e2 or whatever.  
CG: NO. JUST NO.  
CG: YOU WOULD MAKE AN AWFUL AUSPISTICE.  
CG: DON'T INFLICT THAT ON ANYONE, EVER, I BEG YOU.  
TA: dont fuck wiith eriidan, and ii wont have two.  
CG: WHAT THE FUCK.  
CG: ARE YOU FLUSHED FOR HIM OR SOMETHING?  
TA: holy 2hiit KK.  
TA: iit2 not alway2 about the fuckiing quadrant2.  
CG: THE HELL IT ISN'T.  
TA: he2 ju2t my friend, ok?  
TA: ii know iit2 weiird.  
TA: but 2eriiou2ly  
TA: lay the fuck off.  
TA: god, youre 2uch an a22hole 2ometiime2!  
CG: WELL YOU'RE A SMUG PIECE OF BIFURCATED EXCREMENT WHO HAS ONLY GOTTEN MORE INTOLERABLE BY BEING HOOKED INTO A WARSHIP.  
TA: fuck you!  
CG: FUCK YOU TWICE AS HARD, AND SINCE I KNOW YOU JUST STARTED SQUIRTING GENETIC FLUID AT THE USE OF THE WORD "TWICE", GO STUFF YOUR HEAD IN A PAIL OH WAIT YOU CAN'T BECAUSE YOU'RE A SHIP.  
TA: at lea2t IIM not 2tuck iin a cell on my way two the hiigh 2ubjugglator!  
CG: SHIT, YOU'RE RIGHT. FUCK.  
TA: yeah.  
CG: ...  
CG: HEY SOLLUX.  
TA: yeah, KK.  
TA: were 2tiill friiend2.  
CG: FUCK.  
CG: OK.  
TA: 2o  
TA: you want two contact anyone or what?  
CG: WHAT?  
TA: you can totally do that from thii2 computer.  
TA: 2iince ii kiind of have full control of the network.  
TA: unle22 you dont want two help your re2cuer2 fiind you?  
TA: whatever.  
CG: WAIT.  
CG: WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO DO THAT THE ENTIRE TIME, AND YOU'RE JUST TELLING ME THAT NOW?  
TA: you ju2t now 2topped fliippiing your 2hiit, 2o yeah.  
TA: ii ju2t mentiioned iit now.  
CG: DAMN IT, SOLLUX.  
TA: do you want me two connect two the out2iide or not?  
CG: WHAT SORT OF QUESTION IS THAT? OF COURSE I DO.  
TA: ok  
TA: that wa2 all you had two 2ay.

You dip back into the Trollian client, securing the connection (you've done it with Equius so often now, it's practically standard procedure). Then, you connect to Karkat's account and put him online.

Immediately, he sends out a message to the one online member of his chumproll.

carmineGuerrilla [CG] began trolling glowlightAdvisor [GA].  
CG: KANAYA.  
CG: YOU’D BETTER BE THERE.  
CG: I DON'T KNOW HOW LONG I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO STAY ON.  
GA: I Am Here  
GA: Are You All Right  
CG: YEAH, FINE.  
CG: AS FINE AS ANYONE EN ROUTE TO GET SOME FACE-TIME WITH A BUNCH OF MURDERCLOWNS CAN BE, ANYWAY.  
GA: I See  
CG: WHAT ABOUT AC? IS SHE OKAY?  
CG: I SAW HER TAKE THAT SPEAR AND  
CG: FUCK  
GA: I Am Doing What I Can  
GA: She Will Need Some Rest And Sopor But She Is Strong  
GA: She Will Be All Right

You can see some of the tension seep out of Karkat at the news.

CG: OK. GOOD. THAT'S GOOD.  
GA: What Of You  
GA: How Are You Contacting Me Now If You Have Been Captured  
CG: FUNNY, FUCKED UP STORY  
CG: THE SHORT VERSION IS: WE'VE GOT SOME SURPRISE ALLIES ON THE INSIDE.  
CG: AT LEAST, I THINK THEY'RE ALLIES.

He casts a glance down the hallway at Eridan. Little does he know that Eridan is now casting curious looks back, but is refraining from nosing in. You're not quite sure where the seadweller learned such self-control.

CG: ARE ANY OF THE REST OF THE TROOPS UP TO A RESCUE ATTEMPT?  
GA: Of Course  
CG: GOOD, BECAUSE I'M GOING TO NEED MORE THAN USUAL.  
CG: THE RESCUE TEAM NEEDS TO BE BIG ENOUGH FOR TWO, ONE OF WHOM IS GOING TO BE PRETTY MUCH DEAD WEIGHT.  
TA: no, KK.  
CG: YOU DON'T GET A SAY ON THE MATTER.  
TA: for fuck2 2ake  
TA: 2ee, thii2 ii2 why ii diidnt want two tell you!  
TA: becau2e ii knew youd try two pull 2omethiing liike thii2!  
CG: YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I WOULD. I'M NOT LEAVING YOU HERE TO ROT.  
TA: no, karkat. weve already looked iinto iit.  
TA: extractiing me ii2 goiing two take tiime and expertii2e that you cant afford two wa2te.  
TA: ju2t get your2elf out.  
TA: iill be fiine.  
GA: Is This Sollux  
TA: yeah  
TA: hey KA  
GA: How Are You  
TA: iim ok.  
CG: HELLO. YES, YES, ARE WE ALL CAUGHT UP NOW? BECAUSE WE KIND OF HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO TALK ABOUT THAN HOW MUTUALLY OK WE ARE.  
CG: WHICH, BY THE WAY SOLLUX, YOU ARE STILL NOT OK.  
CG: I DON'T CARE WHAT THESE IMPERIAL MONSTERS HAVE PROGRAMMED YOU TO THINK ABOUT IT.  
TA: karkat, iive been liike thii2 for liike fiive 2weep2.  
TA: what2 the biig deal about a few more periigee2?  
CG: BECAUSE NOW I KNOW ABOUT IT.  
TA: why the fuck doe2 that matter?  
CG: IT JUST DOES.  
GA: Might I Ask What All This Is About  
CG: SORRY KANAYA.  
CG: SOLLUX IS THE HELMSMAN OF THE SHIP CARRYING ME TO THE HIGH FUCKING SUBJUGGLATOR.  
GA: I See  
CG: I THINK, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, I'M DOING A PRETTY GOOD JOB OF NOT FREAKING OUT ABOUT IT.  
TA: no, youre freakiing out pretty hard, KK.  
CG: SHUT UP AND LET ME SAVE YOU, YOU UNGRATEFUL ASS.  
TA: iim not the one who need2 2aviing.  
TA: iive been flyiing under the radar for week2.  
TA: youve got 98 hour2 before youre 2o much exotiic colored paiint.  
TA: be2iide2, there2 nothiing you can do even iif you do try.  
TA: tryiing two dii2connect me from the 2y2tem ii2 ju2t goiing two kiill me, and then that wiill kiill everyone on board when the 2hiip2 liife 2upport faiil2.  
GA: It May Be Possible  
GA: Never Mind  
CG: NO. GO AHEAD.  
GA: We Could Perhaps Take Control Of The Entire Ship  
GA: Perhaps It Would Not Be Necessary To Disconnect Sollux If We Could Commandeer The Ship Itself  
CG: YEAH, EXCEPT PRETTY SURE NONE OF MY PEOPLE ARE PIRATES, KANAYA.  
CG: WAIT, DO YOU MEAN  
CG: NO.  
CG: HELL NO.  
CG: HELL. FUCKING. NO.  
GA: It Does Seem The Best Compromise  
CG: THIS IS ALREADY A CLUSTERFUCK. WE DON'T NEED AG TO FUCK UP THE CLUSTER ANYMORE THAN IT ALREADY IS. THE CLUSTER HAS ALREADY BEEN FUCKED.  
CG: BESIDES, SHE CHANGED TAGS WHEN SHE GOT HER PRECIOUS PIRATE SHIP, REMEMBER?  
CG: NONE OF US HAVE ANY WAY TO CONTACT HER.  
TA: ED doe2  
CG: WHAT.  
TA: he2 been in contact wiith her, wiithiin the la2t couple 2ea2on2, at lea2t.  
GA: Wait  
GA: ED  
GA: This Is Eridan  
TA: yeah  
TA: KK2 kiind of u2iing hii2 computer riight now  
TA: one 2ec, let me diig through the log2

You dip into the hard drive. Eridan's security has never been nearly as tight as even Equius', so it's pretty easy to pull up some old logs of him asking Vriska for help getting the assassins off FF's trail. You copy the name. 

In the meantime, they've continued the conversation.

GA: Is This True  
CG: YEAH.  
CG: I DON'T TRUST AMPORA AS FAR AS I CAN KICK HIM, BUT HE GAVE ME THIS COMPUTER TO TALK TO YOU GUYS, AND AT LEAST HE'S NOT BEING PURPOSEFULLY OBSTRUCTIVE, SO I GUESS WE CAN CALL THAT PROGRESS.  
GA: So You  
GA: Do Not Wish For Me To Slice Him In Half Should We Meet Again  
CG: SOLLUX ASKED ME NOT TO KILL HIM ON A WHIM. I GUESS IT'S ONLY COMMON COURTESY I ASK YOU GUYS TO DO THE SAME  
GA: That Is A Pity  
TA: wow, doe2nt that make me feel all warm iin2iide.  
TA: or maybe that2 ju2t my ciircuiits, eheheh.  
CG: STILL NOT FUNNY.  
TA: fiine, fiine  
TA: 2o VK2 new tag ii2 archmarquisesGamble  
TA: iif you guy2 really want two try that  
TA: whiich iim not 2ayiing you 2hould  
TA: becau2e holy 2hiit, iinvolviing her iin anythiing ii2 2tupiid  
TA: but that2 her tag.  
GA: Thank You Sollux  
CG: I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE DOING THIS.  
GA: I Have Just Messaged Her  
GA: But She Does Not Appear To Be Online At The Moment  
GA: How Long Will You Be Online  
CG: JUST UNTIL AMPORA'S GUARD SHIFT ENDS  
CG: WHICH IS IN...  
TA: 1.7 hours  
CG: FUCK  
GA: I Will Contact Her As Soon As I Can  
GA: Perhaps There Is A Time We Might Schedule To All Speak Together  
TA: yeah, ed2 next 2hiift a2 guard wiill be at 8:00 hr2 twomorrow  
CG: THAT WORKS.

The rest of the time is spent with the pair of them exchanging news on the status of other members of the resistance. So-and-so was cut down in the fight. Whats-his-face lost an arm. And so on. You purposefully do not pay attention, because you don't what any chance of anyone going through your system logs to find it imprinted somewhere.

Ten minutes before his shift ends, Eridan comes to stand awkwardly at the cell door, watching Karkat type. KK takes it as the hint it is and finishes up his conversation with Kanaya, then closes everything up (and you make sure to delete the logs). Then, he closes the husktop and hands it back to Eridan through the bars. The highblood stares at his feet as he takes it.

"So, Sollux says you woke him up." Somehow, Karkat is always the one offering the metaphorical peace baton. It's weird, until you get to know him. "What does that mean, exactly?"

Eridan looks so ridiculously hopeful at KK's civil tone, sneaking a glance at him out of the corner of his eye. "Well, when I got here, he was all computery an' 'invalid appellation' this an 'error: semantic' that. So I guess I helped him remember how to be a troll."

"Why?" Karkat steps up to lean against the bars, eyes piercing into the seadweller. "Not that I'm complaining... it's awesome to have him back, even if he is a smug bipolar asshole. But why would you do that?"

Eridan shrugs, turning to face KK more fully. "At first, I just wanted someone to talk to, you know? But then it got personal, an' now I guess I just want to see him out a those fuckin' wires an' walkin an' talkin' like a troll again."

Karkat snorts. "That makes one of you."

"Yeah, he's such a pessimist. Even Eq thinks it might be doable, an-"

"Wait, you have Zahhak in on this?"

ED shifts nervously. "Well, yeah. He was the only one who'd talk to me when I started havin' problems with Sol. An' now the two a' them are tryin' to figure out a way to get him out, but Sol is so convinced that he's fuckin' doomed that he barely tolerates the idea."

TA: you two know iim 2tiill here, riight?

When the husktop pings, they both ignore it, and you find yourself growing frustrated by the necessity of using such an indirect method of communication.

"But you want to free him? Am I understanding that right?"

"A' course I do."

"So what the fuck does that mean for you?"

"What do you mean, Kar?"

"Let me lay it out for you, Ampora." Karkat's voice drops into a growl. "If we manage to get Sollux out of this disaster, we're sure as fuck getting him as far from the Empire as fast as possible. So would you be coming with us, or shooting at our backs?"

"Uh..."

You cameras pick up the next day guard on his way, and you ping the husktop again.

TA: iincomiing.

Again, ED doesn't open it, but it does startle him into noticing the time. He casts a glance at the camera, then an uncertain one back at Karkat.

"That's what I thought," KK hisses, then retreats to the back of his cell.

The heavy door at the end of the block opens to admit the next shift, and Eridan practically flees. Not that you really blame him... there's something really unnerving about Karkat's unnaturally bright red eyes boring accusingly into you like that. 

You're not surprised he hasn't thought about what freeing you means for him, since he's an idiot and all. You can see by the furrow of his brow as he winds his way back toward his block that he's thinking about it now, though.

Once safely back in his block, Eridan ejects his husktop from his sylladex onto his desk, then stares at the closed lid for a moment, chewing his lip. Then, gingerly, he sits at the desk and opens the computer. 

TA: you dont have two an2wer, ED.  
TA: KK2 ju2t beiing an a22hole.

"Sol..."

Ah, shit, he's got that quaver in his voice, like you just said the most tragic thing ever.

TA: iim not goiing two thiink any le22 of you iif you take the 2afe way out  
TA: 2iince thiinkiing le22 of you than ii already do ii2 phy2iically iimpo22iible. 

He quirks a sad little smile. You've never seen the point of his sad smiles, and this one kind of annoys you now, because you're not sure what it means. 

"I'm a little scared a' what could happen, I'll admit that. I didn't spend so long hidin' with Fef an' not learn how unpleasant it is to have to avoid the Empire in everythin’."

TA: 2eriiou2ly, you dont have two explaiin thii2. ii get iit.

"But the thing is, Sol, I _want_ to. I mean, yeah, it's nice not havin' to run an' hide all the time... but if that means I have to be all alone again..." he sighs. "I really, really don't like bein' alone, Sol."

TA: waiit. 2o you want two leave wiith me?

"I _want_ to." Holy shit, he sounds like he's about to cry. "But I can't. If I turn tail now, they'll catch on about Fef. An' then all that work to get her off the legislacerator ranks will be for nothin'."

TA: 2hiit, ED.  
TA: that ii2  
TA: 2uch bull2hiit.  
TA: ii mean holy fuck.

"Hey! What do you mean by that?!"

TA: just admiit youre 2cared.  
TA: dont make up bull2hiit exu2e2.

"It is not bullshit! I worked hard to get her into hidin'!"

TA: and 2o you 2eriiou2ly thiink that, even iif they do make the connectiion and realiize you faked her death  
TA: whiich, let2 be hone2t, ii2 giiviing mo2t of tho2e p2ycho2 way two much crediit  
TA: that 2he cant defend her2elf?  
TA: 2he2 never been helple22, ED.  
TA: even when 2he wa2 2even, 2he wa2 pretty deadly wiith that triident  
TA: and 2he ha2 a fuckiing horrorterror a2 a lu2u2.  
TA: ii thiink 2hell be ok.

He fucking sniffles, and you kind of wish you were physically present to smack him. "You really mean that? You're not just sayin' that to cheer me up?"

TA: what the fuck about that wa2 cheerful?  
TA: ii ju2t poiinted out that your entiire 2elf-2acriifiiciing gambiit wa2 pretty much poiintle22.

He lets out a breathy chuckle and rubs his eyes. "Yeah. You did." And now he's smiling. You suddenly understand jack shit about him. "Is Kar really plannin' to get you out too?"

TA: he thiink2 he ii2.  
TA: theyre planniing to get a certaiin piirate iinvolved.

"Vris? But I didn't think she an' Kar were in touch anymore."

TA: ii  
TA: may have pulled up her new tag from your trolliian log2.  
TA: you 2hould really delete your hii2tory every once iin a whiile, btw.  
TA: iit2 kiind of iincriimiinatiing for 2omeone who2 2uppo2ed two be a loyal empiire 2oldiier.

"Well, I don't usually have people goin' through my personal files!" His lip juts out. "Do you go in there a lot?"

TA: no more than ii have two  
TA: tru2t me  
TA: anythiing two do wiith your per2onal fiile2 can 2tay out of my databank2, a2 far a2 iim concerned.

"Oh. Well, good."

TA: iit2 bad enough haviing your 2tupiid wwiizard fiictiion iimpriinted iin my memory.  
TA: ju2t, yiike2.

"I take the point, Sol." He grows more somber. "How long before we reach the subjugglators?"

TA: ETA 94 hours

"Fuck, that's really not long at all. Do you think they'll be able to get here in time?"

TA: that really depend2 on where VK ii2.  
TA: iif 2he2 halfway acro22 the galaxy, no way.  
TA: iif that2 the ca2e, you have two make 2ure KK get2 out.

"Why me?"

TA: becau2e iim not exactly iin a po2iitiion to piick hiim up and throw hiim iinto an e2cape pod. 

"You could use psionics."

TA: not when iim tiied two the 2hiip.  
TA: the wiires diivert iit all.

"Oh."

TA: your conver2atiional 2kiill2 are a2 2harp a2 ever  
TA: whiich ii2 two 2ay, not at all.

"Well, I guess I can do that. Make sure Kar gets out, I mean."

TA: ok, good.

"But just so you know, Sol."

TA: thii2 ii2 goiing two be riidiiculou2, ii2nt iit?

"I'm not leavin' until you do."

TA: yep. ii wa2 riight.  
TA: iit2 a new ver2iion of my precogniitiion.  
TA: ii hear the voiice2 of the iimmiinently decea2ed  
TA: and the iimmiinently 2tupiid.

"Hey."

TA: and hey, there2 one 2uch voiice now!  
TA: about two be 2tupiid agaiin.  
TA: eheheh

"God, why do I even try with you?"

TA: becau2e you are 2tupiid.  
TA: 2eriiou2ly, eriidan, we ju2t went over thii2.  
TA: try two keep up.

"If I'm stupid for interactin' with you, what does that make you?"

TA: an iintolerable a22hole?

"Rude."

TA: iin2ultiing your2elf ii2nt rude, ED.

"A' course it is."

TA: youre an iidiiot.

"Well you are rude, an' I'm goin' to my coon. Mornin', Sol."

TA: 2leep well, fii2hface.


	23. Sollux: Set Up Memo

"I want in."

Karkat gives him a baleful look through the bars. "You're sure about that, Ampora?"

"A' course I am."

"Because once you're a known companion of the Profaner, you're stuck that way. No undo button."

"I know that."

Karkat stares at him with a narrow-eyed expression, probably trying to see if ED really does get it, and isn't just blindly spouting what he thinks is dramatic. Not that Eridan is prone to that sort of thing or anything, holy shit.

After a moment of making him shift nervously, Karkat snorts derisively and holds out his hands. Eridan blinks for a moment before he gets it and ejects his husktop into KK's grip. KK moves to sit against the wall of his cell. "Well come on," he says as he opens the computer. "If you're going to be part of this, you'd better know what the fuck is going on."

Eridan nods and unlocks the cell door, then strides in and takes a seat right next to Karkat. It's a little weird, but you find yourself wishing you could be there, sitting on the dirty cell floor with them.

"Sollux, is the connection secure?"

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling carmineGuerrilla [CG]  
TA: of cour2e  
TA: ju2t remember that youre iin lock2tep  
TA: ii cant keep all the computer2 iinvolved off the iimperiial 2erver2 iif iit2 not realtiime.

"Got it."

TA: al2o, ii dii2tinctly remember your pa2t me-future me bull2hiit.  
TA: 2o yeah  
TA: lock2tep.

"For fuck's sake Sollux, that was five sweeps ago. Cut me some slack here! Five-sweep-ago Past Me was a raging moron." You really can't tell if he even knows what he just did there. "Anyway, I'm going to open up the memo, and you're both free to contribute, but don't be assholes, okay? I don't want any arguing about how sincere wwe promise wwe are, or how you're tho doomed or whatever. We have a limited window to figure out what the fuck we're doing, here."

"Yeah, yeah. We get it Kar."

TA: yeah, no need two be a douche about iit.

"Just wanted to make sure we're clear." He moves the cursor to Trollian’s "new board" function.

carmineGuerrilla [CG] opened memo on board RAMPANT ASSHOLE RESCUE PARTY  
CG: COME ON GUYS, WE DON'T HAVE ALL DAY HERE.  
CG: LITERALLY, BECAUSE WE NEED TO TIME-LOCK THIS IF WE WANT TO KEEP THE CONNECTION SECURE.  
CG: INSTEAD OF LETTING ANYONE LOG IN ANYWHEN.  
CG: NO MATTER HOW USEFUL GIVING A FEW NIGHTS WARNING WOULD BE, BECAUSE FUCK THINGS BEING EASY.  
glowlightAdvisor [GA] responded to memo  
GA: I Am Here  
acrobaticCatalyst [AC] responded to memo  
AC: :33 < *ac gingerly but determinedly follows ga in*  
CG: NEPETA, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING OUT OF YOUR COON?  
AC: :33 < *the grrreat feline warrior is not going to sl33p when efurryone else is talking about saving her karkitty!*  
CG: GOG DAMMIT NEP  
GA: She Did Kick Up Quite A Fuss When I Told Her I Had Spoken With You Yesterday  
CG: YEAH, THAT'S WHY YOU DON'T FUCKING TELL HER.  
AC: :33 < nyew! >:((  
GA: I Will Invite Vriska Now  
archmarquisesGamble [AG] responded to memo  
AG: Helloooooooo resistance fighters!  
AG: Long time no troll. ::::)  
GA: Hello Again Vriska  
CG: I'M ALREADY HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS.  
AC: :33 < *ac purrowls up to ag, flexing her claws and growling to make sure that ag knows not to mess with cg!*  
AG: *AG is totally cool with that, 8ecause this awesome spider queen was promised money to knock over an imperial ship, and that just sounds like fun*  
AG: That's what Fussyfangs said anyway. Is she right? You hiring me, Nu8s?  
CG: APPARENTLY  
AG: Aaaaaaaawesome.

"Do you think we should get Eq in on this?" Eridan asks. "So he knows what's goin' on?" 

Karkat casts him a side-long look. "You trust him not to rat us out?"

"Nep wouldn't let him. Anyway, he hasn't told anyone about our project with Sol yet. And if we’re takin' the ship, we might find a way to rendezvous with him so he can help."

Karkat nods, and turns back to the computer.

CG: OH, AND JUST A HEADS UP.  
CG: AMPORA'S IN ON THIS MEMO.  
CG: HE'S READING OVER MY SHOULDER RIGHT NOW, GIVING ME A FULL BLAST OF HIS RANCID FISHBREATH.  
AG: Ahaaaaaaaa! I wondered how the Condesce's most wanted got my trolltag!  
CG: wwell to be fair sol told him  
CG: not me  
AG: Sol? As in Captor????????  
GA: Karkat  
GA: You Are Certain About This  
GA: Eridan Does Have A History Of Betraying Those He Claims To Care About  
CG: HE CLAIMS HE DIDN’T KILL HER.  
CG: TAKE FROM THAT WHATEVER YOU WANT.  
AG: W8, he cl8ims what?!  
AG: W8y to keep a secret, Erid8n!!!!!!!!  
CG: i didnt tell kar that one either  
CG: god dammit sol

Karkat snatches the keyboard back from Eridan.

CG: WHAT THE FUCK. SERKET, ARE YOU SAYING HE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH?  
CG: AND YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS?!  
AG: Of course I knew! Who do you think made sure her “assassin8tion” got in the records?  
GA: Is This True  
GA: Feferi Is Alive  
AG: Siiiiiiiigh!  
AG: Well, there’s no point in keeping her off now!!!!!!!!  
courtlyCorsair [CC] responded to memo  
CC: )(I ---EV--ERYON--E! 38D  
AC: :33 < FEFURRY!!  
astroTorero [AT] responded to memo  
AT: uHH, iM GOING TO JOIN TOO, sINCE, fEFERI CAN?  
AG: Fiiiiiiiine.  
AC: :33 < *ac happily pounces her furends*  
CC: It’s WOND--ERFUL to sea you too, Nepeta!  
GA: I Am Glad To See You Alive As Well Feferi  
CC: TANK YOU, Kanaya!  
TA: waiit.  
TA: 2he2 on a fuckiing piirate 2hiip??  
TA: what the fuck, ED, you told me 2he wa2 2afe!  
TA: how the fuck ii2 beiing on a piirate 2hiip wiith 2piiderbiitch 2afe???  
CG: i said sorta safe  
TA: oh holy 2hiit eriidan.  
CC: SOLLUX?! 38O  
AC: :33 < *ac pounces upon the quiet little b33, but gently so she does not get stung!*  
AG: Well, helloooooooo, Captor! ::::)  
CC: O)( MY COD!!!  
CC: Sollux, )(OW AR-E YOU? W)(ere )(ave you B----E-----EN?! 38D  
TA: uh, hey.  
TA: iive been, you know  
CG: IF YOU SAY HANGING AROUND, I SWEAR I AM GOING TO BREAK OUT OF THIS CELL RIGHT NOW JUST SO I CAN FIND YOU AND STRANGLE YOU.  
TA: eheheh  
AT: dID I MISS, sOMETHING? sINCE WHEN IS sOLLUX, bACK?  
AG: That’s what I’m wondering! ::::?  
CG: WHICH REMINDS ME THAT THERE'S ONE MORE ASSHOLE WHO SHOULD BE INVITED TO THIS TRAINWRECK OF A PARTY.  
CG: ONE SECOND

Karkat glances up at your camera, and you send an invite to a certain mechanic.

centaursTesticle [CT] responded to memo  
CT: D --> It 100% like I have been summoned  
AC: :33 < equius!  
CT: D --> Hello Nepeta  
AG: So whyyyyyyyy are you including the STRONG troll wonder in on this?  
AG: And what is all this a8out Captor????????  
CC: And )(OW can we K-ELP? 38D  
CT: D --> I would also like some e%planation as to the current situation  
CG: OKAY, LISTEN UP, ASSHOLES.  
CG: LONG STORY SHORT, I'VE BEEN CAPTURED BY THE EMPIRE.  
GA: Again  
CG: I'M ON A SHIP TRANSPORTING ME TO THE HIGH SUBJUGGLATOR  
AC: :33 < again  
CG: AND I NEED A RESCUE TEAM IN HERE ASAP  
CG: AND NOT FUCKING AGAIN  
CG: BECAUSE THIS ONE ISN’T JUST FOR ME.  
AG: Go oooooooon.  
CG: AG, I NEED YOU TO CAPTURE A SHIP WITHOUT DOING TOO MUCH DAMAGE TO IT, AND DEFINITELY NOT TAKING IT OUT OF COMMISSION. WE NEED TO COMMANDEER IT, NOT DESTROY IT.  
AG: I can do that. It's what a pir8 queen does 8est, you know!  
AG: What coordin8tes and time frame are we talking a8out, here?  
CG: SOLLUX?  
TA: ETA 73 hours  
TA: Current coordinates: X: 863289, 9632144; Y: 981177, 9333111; Z: 896633, 6612633  
TA: Heading: X: 535321, 5641113; Y: 774699, 1868543; Z: 683186, 6541333  
TA: and, for the record, ii 2tiill thiink thii2 ii2 a terriible iidea.  
AG: Oh my gooooooood, you are still such a downer!  
TA: plea2e dont talk two me.  
AG: Hey! You’re not still 8itter a8out what happened like seven sweeps ago, are you?!  
TA: you u2ed me a2 a weapon two kiill AA.  
TA: when the fuck am ii ever 2uppo2ed two be okay wiith that??  
CT: D --> Hm  
apocalypseArisen [AA] responded to memo  
AA: really s0llux its 0kay  
TA: no, iit2 really not.  
AG: I’ve already said I’m sorry! What more do you want?!  
TA: you two diie iin a p2iioniic bla2t liike 2he diid miight be a good 2tart.

“Sol!” Eridan scolds out loud, leveling a look up at the camera. “Remember that she’s been protectin' Fef? Show some glubbin' respect!”

CG: ALL OF YOU, KNOCK IT OFF.  
CG: AG, ARE YOU NEAR ENOUGH TO MAKE THAT TIME FRAME OR NOT?  
AG: Yeah, I’m super near8y!  
AG: So what kind of ship are we talking a8out? Legislacer8tor cruiser? Corsair?  
CG: I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE. THE ONLY THING I KNOW IS IT’S NAMED THE YELLOW PARADOX OR SOMETHING EQUALLY RETARDED.  
AG: W8.  
AG: The Golden Paradox.  
AG: You want me to capture THE Golden Paradox?  
AG: And hoooooooow do you think I’ll manage that?  
CG: YOU KNOW IT?  
AG: Of course I know it!  
AG: It’s only the fastest, 8est equipped ship of the Condesce’s fleet short of the flagship!  
AG: I spend my career trying to avooooooooid ships like the Golden Paradox!  
CG: TO BE FAIR, THE SHIP IS GOING TO BE DOING MOST OF THE WORK FOR YOU.  
CG: RIGHT, SOLLUX?  
TA: yeah, ii gue22.  
AG: ::::?  
CT: D --> I take it this scheme is a compromise to attempt to save Captor without disconnecting him  
CT: D --> Am I correct  
CG: YES, EXACTLY.  
CG: UNLESS YOU HAVE A WAY TO JUST TAKE HIM DOWN NOW.  
CG: BECAUSE, I HAVE TO SAY, TRANSPORTING ONE TROLL WOULD BE A HELL OF A LOT EASIER THAN AN ENTIRE FUCKING SHIP.  
CT: D --> No, I do not have such a means as of yet  
GA: If I May Ask  
GA: What Precisely Is The Problem  
GA: Is This Really A Question Of Him Being Unable To Function Without Life Support  
CT: D --> Physically, taking him down should be feasible, if you can get him to a dedicated medical unit in a timely manner  
CT: D --> But there would be mental complications

“Wait, what?” Eridan’s eyes snap up to your camera. “What does that mean?!”

CG: WELL NOW AMPORA’S FREAKING OUT. APPARENTLY YOU TWO GENIUSES DIDN’T TELL HIM THAT PART?  
CT: D --> Captor requested that I not  
CT: D --> For that, Captor, I e%press my apologies, as I did not realize he was privy to this conversation  
TA: eh, iit2 fiine.  
TA: he’d fiind out at 2ome poiint anyway.

“Sol, what the fuck is he talkin' about?! What mental complications?!”

AC: :33 < im confuzzed :((  
AG: Yeah, just spit it out already!!!!!!!!  
TA: 2omeone go ahead and 2ay iit.  
TA: miight a2 well get iit out iinto the open.  
CG: OKAY, HERE’S THE DEAL.  
CG: SOLLUX IS A HELMSMAN. SPECIFICALLY, THE HELMSMAN OF THE WARSHIP THAT IS CURRENTLY TAKING ME TO THE HIGH SUBJUGGLATOR.  
CG: TURNS OUT THIS IS A THING NEITHER OF US WANTS TO BE A THING THAT IS TRUE.  
CG: I WANT TO GET HIM OUT WITH ME, BUT APPARENTLY TAKING HIM OUT OF THE HELMSMAN RIG WILL LEAD TO SOME SORT OF CLUSTERFUCK OR ANOTHER.  
CG: THE LOGICAL SOLUTION? PIRACY.  
CG: APPARENTLY.  
AG: I seeeeeeee.  
CC: Sollux, t)(at’s TERBUBBLE! T)(is is w)(ere you’ve been ALL T)(-ES-E SW--E----EPS?!  
TA: yeah, FF.  
TA: 2orry ii couldnt tell you guy2.  
AC: :33 < you must have b33n so lonely  
TA: 2eriiou2ly, iit2 ok.  
TA: iit2 ju2t niice two talk two all you guy2 agaiin.  
CC: We missed glubbing wit)( you TOO!!!  
CG: eq wwhat mental complications tgwrg vuy  
CG: FUF[DAVHPEN  
CG: IGNORE HIM.  
CG: WE DON’T HAVE TIME.  
CT: D--> I presume Captor is not responding to that inquiry  
CC: I would pike to know too! 38(  
AT: i, ,uH, aM ALSO, cURIOUS,  
AA: it is n0t hard t0 explain  
AA: s0llux n0w functi0ns as i d0  
AA: driven by a bi0l0gical c0re but heavily supp0rted by mechanical c0mp0nents  
AG: Soooooooo, he needs a soul8ot?  
CT: D--> Neigh, the e%act opposite  
CT: D--> Megido had an intact mind, but had a need for a functional body  
CT: D--> Captor’s body is relatively functional, if in a weakened state.  
CT: D--> It is his mind that requires supplementation

Both Karket and Eridan look like someone just killed their lusii. And, judging from the long silence in the very crowded memo, other people are reacting similarly.

TA: iit2 really not a biig deal.  
CG: NOT A BIG DEAL.  
CG: WHAT. THE FUCK. SOLLUX.  
CG: WHEN WERE YOU GOING TO TELL US THAT YOUR THINKPAN CAN’T WORK WITHOUT A FUCKING COMPUTER ATTACHED TO IT?!  
TA: iit2 not nece22ariily that iit wouldnt work.  
TA: though that ii2 a po22iibiility.  
TA: iit2 ju2t that iit wouldnt work very well.  
TA: not really anythiing worth 2aviing, anyway.  
GA: Of Course It Is  
TA: not wiithout my proce22or iit ii2nt.  
TA: cau2e phy2iically?  
TA: iit2 pretty burnt out.  
CG: BURNT OUT HOW.  
TA: liike, ii don’t know iif ii’d even remember my own name?

Eridan seriously looks like he’s about to cry. 

TA: 2ee, thii2 ii2 why ii diidnt want anyone two know.  
TA: and iit2 al2o why wa2tiing thii2 much effort tryiing two 2ave me ii2 2tupiid.  
TA: ju2t get your2elf out, karkat.  
TA: we can deal wiith my i22ue2 later.  
CG: NO, FUCK YOU.  
TA: oh for fuck2 2ake, KK.  
CG: NO. YOU LISTEN, YOU SORRY EXCUSE FOR A BATTERY.  
CG: THIS RIGHT HERE? IT'S JUST MORE FUCKING REASON TO WANT TO GET YOU OUT OF THAT HELMSBLOCK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, BECAUSE WHO KNOWS HOW FUCKED UP YOU’LL BE IF WE LET YOU SIT IN THERE ANY LONGER?  
AC: :33 < i agrrrr33!  
CC: Y----EA)(!!!  
TA: 2eriiou2ly, the damage ii2 already done.  
TA: iit2 fiine.

“It is not fine!” Eridan snaps out loud. He glares up at the camera, his eyes remotely boring right into you. “I am so glubbin' sick a' you actin' like your situation ain’t terrible! It’s awful, an' it’s really the least any of us can do to try to get you out of it! So just shut your fuckin' mouth until you’re ready to fuckin' _help_.”

“Well said,” Karkat murmurs, keeping his eyes on the screen.

Somehow, the scolding stings from ED a lot more than it does from KK. Maybe because Eridan doesn’t usually snap at you like that? Like he _means_ it? Fuck if you know. All you know is that it makes you angry, and you're not sure if you're angrier at him or yourself.

CG: WELL, AMPORA JUST EXPLODED.  
CG: SEEMS TO HAVE SHUT SOLLUX UP, AT LEAST.  
CG: WHAT THE FUCK, I DON’T EVEN WANT TO KNOW. IT WORKED, SO WHATEVER.  
AT: sO, uH, i HATE TO INTERRUPT, bUT,,, hOW ARE WE GOING, tO DO THIS EXACTLY?  
AT: sTEALING A MAJOR, iMPERIAL SHIP, i MEAN?  
CG: YOU’RE THE PIRATES. YOU TELL ME.  
AG: Hmmmmmmmm.  
AG: How much control does Captor have, exactly?  
CG: SOLLUX?  
CG: GOING TO ANSWER, ASSHOLE?  
CG: OH GREAT. NOW HE’S SULKING.  
CG: REAL MATURE, FUCKASS.

“Can I?” Eridan says, and Karkat passes him the keyboard. You just sit in the coding and stay silent, because apparently your opinion counts for nothing here.

CG: its pretty total as far as i can tell  
CG: hes got total control a all the interior stuff at least  
CG: cameras an doors an security systems  
CG: an hes got communications so he can block any outgoin calls  
CG: also hes talked about changin his headin so he can probably drivve the ship if he needs to  
AG: What about external guns? Those are usually manually oper8ted.  
CG: uuuh probably not then  
GA: But It Is Hard To Shoot The Guns If Everyone Is Locked In Their Respiteblock.  
CG: yeah exactly  
CT: D--> Once the staff notices a malfunction, they are bound to investigate  
CT: D--> They will at the least wish to e%amine the helmsman for anomalies

Karkat takes back the husktop.

CG: WHICH IS WHY EVERYONE WOULD NEED TO MOVE FAST.  
GA: Understood  
AG: Fast and 8rutal. Just the way I like it! ::::)  
AC: :33 < *ac will be so fast, they won’t even s33 her*  
CG: NO, NEPETA. YOU STAY IN YOUR GODDAMNED COON.  
CT: D--> Mutantb100d, I would appreciate it if you did not speak to my moirail in such a manner  
CG: SHE’S FUCKING INJURED. SHE SHOULD BE RESTING.  
CT: D --> I see  
CT: D --> Nepeta, is this true  
AC: :33 < im not that hurt!  
CG: YOU WERE IMPALED BY A SPEAR.  
CT: D --> Nepeta, I order you to stay out of this and rest  
AC: :33 < no!  
CT: D --> Yes  
AC: :33 < no!  
CT: D --> Yes  
AC: :33 < no!  
CT: D --> Yes  
AG: Not that this isn’t faaaaaaaascin8ing, but are we rendezvousing with you guys at some point?  
GA: That Would Be Ideal Yes  
GA: We Have A Number Of Forces That Could Supplement Your Own  
AG: Good.  
AG: If we’re taking on the GP, I’ll take all the cannon fodder I can get!  
CC: Glub glub, B-E NIC-E!  
AG: Glu8 glu8, god you’re naggy. Eridan, I don’t know how you lasted alone with her for like three sweeps! 8luuuuuuuuh!  
CG: it helps to be flushed i guess  
CC: -Eridan  
AG: Awwwwwwwwkwaaaaaaaard.  
CG: no sorry  
CG: i just wwanted to say im sorry i guess  
CG: i didnt handle bein rejected vvery wwell  
CG: i get it noww  
CG: if it aint there it aint there  
CG: so im sorry fef  
CG: can wwe still be fronds  
CC: OF COURS----E!!!! 38D  
CC: You t)(ink after w)(at you did for me we’re not FRONDS?  
CC: You’re so SEALY sometines!  
CG: oh  
CG: good  
AC: :33 < how purrfectly adorable!  
AG: Gaaaaaaaag.  
CG: OH MY GOD.  
CG: AMPORA, NEXT TIME YOU ASK FOR THE HUSKTOP, IT HAD BETTER BE FOR SOMETHING A LOT MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN SPEWING OLD FEELINGS ALL OVER THE MEMO.  
CG: BECAUSE, HELLO, I’M STILL IN A CELL ON MY WAY TO THE SUBJUGGLATORS. CAN WE WORK TOWARD MAKING THAT NOT A THING, PLEASE? HOPEFULLY BEFORE THE GUARD SHIFT CHANGES AND I’M OUT A COMPUTER AGAIN?  
AG: You could always ask Captor to use his 8rain.  
CG: HOLY FUCK IS THAT NOT FUNNY.  
CG: DO YOU WANT OUR MONEY OR NOT? BECAUSE NOT DOING THIS IS STILL ON THE TABLE.  
AG: Fiiiiiiiine. I’ll 8e nice.  
AT: i’D, lIKE TO SEE THAT,  
AT: yOU BEING NICE, i MEAN?  
AG: You shut up.  
AT: oKAY,  
AT: bUT ONLY BECAUSE I WANT TO, nOT BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME TO,  
AT: jUST TO MAKE THAT CLEAR,  
AG: Ugh.  
CC: T)(at’s -ENOUG)( you two! Let's get glubbing!  
CC: I be-reef we have a s)(ip to steal! 38D


	24. Sollux: Fuck It

Ten minutes to the end of Eridan’s shift, you ping a warning through the husktop, and Karkat hurries them to finish up the last of their plans to hijack you, then closes the memo to much “BY------E!!!”s and “Good luuuuuuuuck”s. Then, KK leans back against the wall, looking exhausted but relieved. 

Meanwhile, Eridan’s brows furrow, and he looks up at your camera. “You went awful quiet, Sol.”

KK gives ED a funny look, but Eridan doesn’t notice. He’s busy looking pointedly between your camera and the husktop, obviously waiting for a response.

Fuck it.

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]  
TA: 2o what?  
TA: iit2 not liike you care about my opiiniion anyway.

“Well that’s not true.”

TA: no, you both made iit pretty clear.  
TA: ii 2hould ju2t 2hut up.  
TA: becau2e all of you are goiing two do what you want.  
TA: and iim ju2t the mass of organ2 and biiowiire2 youll be draggiing along for the riide.

“It’s not like that, Sol.”

TA: yeah riight.  
TA: excu2e me iif ii thiink youre full of 2hiit.

“What did I say about havin' a little hope, Sol? I thought you said you were goin' to try it.”

TA: triied iit.  
TA: faiiled.  
TA: ii giive up.

“No you don’t.”

TA: fuck you.

“Come on, Sol. What’s really wrong?”

TA: ii dont fuckiing know, ok?  
TA: ii ju2t

“Come on, keep goin'.” 

TA: iim 2orry ii diidnt mentiion the burnt out pan thiing before.  
TA: ii gue22 ii ju2t diidnt want you guy2 two know.  
TA: how liittle troll there ii2 left iin me, ii mean.

“Hoofbeast shit,” Karkat hisses, and ED jumps as if he’d forgotten KK was there. “You’re plenty troll.”

TA: iim really kiind of not.  
TA: iim a program.  
TA: GoldenParadox_sys  
TA: ii can 2en2e the feeliing2 of my biiologiical body  
TA: and ii have memoriie2 iin my databank2 that ii converted from iit.  
TA: but all thii2 riight here?  
TA: the2e word2?  
TA: iit2 comiing from a routiine ii 2et up.  
TA: my thought2 are encoded iin biinary  
TA: becau2e there2 not enough of me left two do iit otherwii2e.

Slowly, Eridan says, “That’s why you’ve been fightin' this so hard, isn’t it? You’re scared a' what takin' you out a' the ship will do to you?”

TA: yeah  
TA: ii dont want two be a burden  
TA: and ii defiiniitely dont want two be a thiing two be piitiied.  
TA: iif that2 how iit goe2, and all tho2e people 2ee me liike that  
TA: fuck  
TA: ii ju2t cant

“We won’t let it come to that, Sol. I promise.”

TA: youd better fuckiing keep that, a22hole.

Your camera picks up the next guard on the way.

TA: 2hiit, next 2hiift2 comiing.

ED nods and stands. KK hands him his husktop, and Eridan stores it in his sylladex. When he heads out of the cell, KK follows close at his heels, only stopping short at the door so that Eridan can close and lock it between them. You’re having a difficult time interpreting Karkat's expression (you wonder if it would be easier if you weren’t mostly computer, but no, probably not. You’ve never been good at reading people.)

“Thanks, Ampora.”

“Hm? For what?”

The door at the end of the block bangs open, and KK twists a wry smile. “Use your imagination.”

Eridan is left to blink in confusion, but he hustles off quickly enough as the next shift takes over. You watch him idly through your cameras… until you feel a tickle on your network. It feels like a distant computer is trying to gain access, but directly to you instead of to any device on the network. You peek in at the data stream, and instantly recognize the IP.

Nervous but curious, you open a port and let her directly into your coding. 

s0llux

hey, AA.  
what2 up?

i was w0ndering if y0u w0uld like t0 make a backup

a backup?

yes  
i kn0w that the plan is t0 take c0ntr0l 0f the ship but given that there are any number 0f things that c0uld go wr0ng it w0uld be safest to ensure y0ur base files are backed up

ii… dont really have anywhere two 2tore them.

i can carry them f0r y0u

AA  
are you 2ure?  
my 2y2tem ii2 pretty biig, and really fucked up.  
ii dont want two hurt you.

i had anticipated s0mething like this w0uld happen and have walled 0ff a partiti0n in my pr0gramming purely f0r this purp0se  
it will n0t harm me n0r will any of my pr0gramming be able to c0rrupt y0urs

…

please s0llux

wiill that even work? iif thiing2 go two 2hiit?  
who am ii kiiddiing… when thiing2 go two 2hiit.  
how would ii even connect two iit again wiithout my biiowiire2?

i d0 n0t kn0w that  
i just kn0w that y0u will have a higher pr0bability 0f surviving intact if y0u d0 this  
the ability t0 d0 this is 0ne of the advantages 0f existing in tw0 states as we d0

eheheh, yeah, that2 true.

s0 you will d0 it

yeah, okay.  
thank2, AA.

0f c0urse  
0u0  
n0 s0rry that l00ks stupid

eheheh.

And that's that. No further niceties need to be exchanged... you simply open a stream of data between the two of you, and spend the rest of the night copying your system files.

Late in the morning, you feel another unfamiliar set of scanners brush against your network, but it disappears after a couple seconds, and you're too busy copying your memory banks to spare it much more thought than that.


	25. Sollux: Get Hijacked

The next day is full of final tweaks to the plan and general bickering that, if you're honest with yourself, you did miss an awful lot.

What you didn’t miss, though? The voices.

You’re not sure if it’s because you’re more in tune with your biological thinkpan, or if there are just more of them now, but, for the first time in five sweeps, the imminently deceased start screaming at you from under your routines. You can’t wall them off with code, since these are purely a function of your biological side, but at least immersing yourself in your routines drowns them out. It’s one advantage to being half computer.

Still, you can’t help occasionally straining your attention to try to identify them, but you can’t tell if they include Karkat, or Eridan, or yourself, or anyone else in on this plan. There are just too many voices to pick out a single one.

One thing’s for sure… a lot of people are about to die.

At approximately ETA 43 hours, you exit a hyperspace hop into a trap that you entirely knew was coming, and the game is on.

You emerge into normal space into a blockade of small ships in the early evening. Your databanks immediately fire with the ships' IDs, pulling up their flags as pirate vessels from the Imperial databanks. You silence the warnings before they can reach anyone on board, hoping to give Vriska's fleet as much time to surround you as possible. You send a ping to Eridan's husktop. He's been pacing his block all day. 

You do your best not to balk as you feel the mechanical pings of the pirate ships identifying you in turn. You can feel the cool impersonality of them, despite the fact that any ship above a shuttle size is bound to have a helmsman. None of the helmsmen of the opposing fleet have achieved the state of awareness that you have. You're not sure whether to pity them, or envy them.

There's no time to think about it anyway. One part of you tracks Eridan's swift passage through the corridors. Meanwhile, the troll currently monitoring the communications and viewports on the bridge has just noticed the dark shapes looming in the exterior viewport. He zooms in, and your camera sweeps over Vriska's flagship, the Fortune's Favor. The ship is swift, sleek, and idling right in your projected path, so you're not surprised that the troll starts panicking. He bangs on the intercom to call the captain, and you jam it to buy everyone a little more time.

Eridan has stopped at the armory and picked up the applicable items, and once he leaves you disable the door's unlock code to make sure no one else can get in there. ED is now beelining for the next objective... the holding cells.

Meanwhile, the bridge is starting to wake up to the fact that something is wrong. There are four trolls there right now, monitoring communications and navigation. The communications operative shouts to a nearby colleague to go get the captain, and you allow the greenblood recruit to pass through your doors and fetch Scimitar. You're tempted to just lock Scimitar in his block, except that Vriska would throw a fit if she didn't get to put on a bit of a show for him, and you don't give enough of a shit to risk that. These past few weeks, you've learned a thing or two about how to deal with histrionic highbloods.

So, you monitor the captain at the same time you watch ED. The captain is in his office when the bridge crewman arrives and tells him the situation, and the old veteran starts running for the bridge just as ED arrives in cell block two. The blast of Ahab's Crosshairs is so loud that the sound distorts in your camera microphone, but you find your attention drawn more to the bridge, where your camera records footage of Captain Scimitar stopping in front of the viewport and studying the blockade through narrowed eyes.

"Why are we slowing down?" the captain asks.

"Part of me didn't think you'd actually do it," KK says from within his cell on the other side of the ship, eyeing the corpse of his guard as ED stands over it.

"I-I don't know, sir,” says a minion on the bridge. “We didn't see any warnings about it."

"Me neither, Kar,” Eridan says softly. “Here."

A door opens and a pair of sickles change hands, and a new communication tickles your external channels. You display the communication request on the bridge just like you always do, trying to calculate how much time the pair of saboteurs in the cell block need.

The captain accepts the communication, and a darkened bridge appears on screen, in the middle of which is a striking female silhouette in a wide-brimmed hat. Other figures can be seen lurking in the background. "Well helloooooooo, Golden Paradox."

"Who are you supposed to be?" your captain snaps.

Vriska doffs her cap, not that it does much when she's backlit. "The Nefarious LadyLuck, at your service."

The Captain is unimpressed. He crosses his arms and narrows his blue eyes. “I’ve heard of you. You’re that wriggler playing at pirate queen.”

“Mm-hm. I guess that’s one way to put it.” You see the flash of a sharp smile onscreen. “And I do soooooooo like to play rough. Want to play with me, Captain?”

ED and KK are interrupted in their mad dash through the halls as a wandering patrol spots and recognizes the Profaner. Said guard has a sickle through his throat mid-shout, but you think now is a good time to lock down the respiteblocks of everyone not already out.

It’s early evening yet. There are a couple early risers in the training rooms, but most people not on the day shift are just waking up. This leaves 86 potentially hostile soldiers out of their blocks. Well, 85 now. Still, it’s a lot better than the 413 it could be.

ED continues his sprinting through the halls, with KK following tight on his heels, and you turn you attention back to the bridge.

“…stand up to the might of the Golden Paradox. I will shred you to pieces, little girl, so turn around and sail away before I get nasty.” You don’t bother to turn back the recording to see what you missed. You can pretty much guess.

“Siiiiiiiigh. Boring threats, boring fight. You’re lucky I want your cargo so much, or I would leave.”

At that, the captain tenses. “How did you know about him?”

“Puh-lease. Who doesn’t? I’d say something like ‘hand over the Profaner and you keep your life'…” she laughs, “but that just wouldn’t be true, now would it? I do so believe in being open and honest with my victims!”

“You’re a fool,” the captain spits, slamming his hand down on the communications’ panel “all hands” alarm button. Which you, of course, disabled. “What the-?”

“Sir,” says the troll manning the console, “I think something’s wrong with our communications. It’s been jammed.”

“How can it be jammed,” Scimitar hisses back, “if there’s an open video call right now?”

Vriska’s raucous laughter echoes around the bridge. 

The minion cowers. “I can’t get on the intercom or set off any alarms or anything, and my feed to the security cameras went dark a couple minutes ago.”

“Sabotage,” the captain hisses. “She’s got an agent here!”

“Amazing fucking deduction! Give the mental prodigy a medal!” Spits Karkat’s voice as he and Eridan arrive on the bridge. Weapons pop out of strife specibi all around. Then Vriska casually presses two fingers to her head and every opposing soldier except Captain Scimitar does this unnatural little twitch. The captain freezes as his own minion presses a pistol into the small of his back.

KK strolls through the room of barely-not-hostile highbloods like he owns the place, while Eridan hangs back by the door, looking much less comfortable. Karkat stops in front of the scowling captain. 

“You want to talk again about how I don’t live up to my legend, fuckass?”

“You overstep yourself. No mere pirate is going to withstand four hundred of the Empire’s best troops.”

“Mm, he’s right,” Vriska hums. “We’d better whittle them down. Captor, why don’t you start making the respiteblocks void of air. I’d start with the lowbloods.”

“Holy shit, Vriska,” KK snaps at the screen, “you are not being a hemolitist when you’re rescuing me. That is not a thing that can possibly be happening, because even you have more self-awareness than that.”

“Whaaaaaaaat? I thought it’d be funny.”

“Just no. Sollux, take out all the compartments.”

“Booooooooring.”

You insert some text into the stream, so it will show up over the viewports of both ships.

IIM GOIING WIITH KK ON THII2 ONE

“Yeah, you siding with Vantas. I’m soooooooo shocked.”

You start reversing the vents, sucking the breathable air out of all currently occupied respiteblocks. It's kind of horrifying, and feels a little like cheating but... these assholes would cull you if they found out that you wanted the dignity of being treated like a person, so... seriously, fuck those guys.

"Sollux," KK barks. "Are there any high ranking soldiers not locked in their blocks?"

YEAH, FOUR OFFIICER2 DETECTED.

“Which ones?” Eridan asks.

FIIR2T MATE 2WENNY. LT GEELAO. LT IIOPRET. 2ND OFFIICER OFADIIA.

“Any of those we should worry about?” KK asks ED.

“Kar, this is an elite military ship, full of elite military personnel. We gotta worry about all a' them.”

“Well, they did admit you, so their standards can’t be that high.”

“Hurtful.”

The captain’s been watching the conversation with a narrowed, calculating expression. Now, he bursts into motion so quickly that even you can’t predict it. His eponymous scimitar pops out of his strife specibus and chops the head off the minion holding a pistol to his back. He then moves swiftly for the door. KK leaps forward to get a good slice into his back as he passes, but he's too quick for either biological being to properly react.

You are not purely biological. You slam the door shut just before the captain reaches it, and the old veteran slams into it. He seems to realize that trying to unlock it via code is pointless, so he just goes with smashing the keypad with the pommel of his sword. Your connection to the door fuzzes out, which disengages the locks (a design flaw that always seems ass-backwards to you... but what would a spaceship know about spaceship architecture?). He looks about to try to pry it open, but Ahab's Crosshairs neatly blasts a hole through his torso from behind.

"Oh great going, Eridan!" Vriska snaps. "The plan was to keep him alive!"

"Well, I didn't have much of a choice, did I? He was goin' to warn everyone!"

Karkat kicks the captain's slightly smoking corpse. "Not that it matters either way. Even these dumbasses will notice something's up soon. Serket, how long before you guys are on board?”

“Like, eight minutes.”

“Of course it’s eight.” He starts going around to the remaining trolls on the bridge, still paralyzed by Vriska’s power, and cuts them down one by one with methodical determination. “Get in here as soon as you can. It’s about to get messy. Ampora?”

“Yeah, Kar?”

“Where the fuck is the helmsblock?”


	26. Sollux: Receive Incoming Communication

It doesn’t take long for the soldiers to realize that something’s wrong with the ship. The trolls out in the halls can hear the ones trapped inside their respiteblocks banging on the doors, and when someone tries to get into the locked down armory, things start clicking. 

You find yourself a bit overloaded, trying to keep an eye on the officers, and KK and ED, and all of the potential threats. Your cameras are all running fine, but you can’t focus on all of them at once, so you have to juggle your attention between a couple cameras.

The camera outside your helmsblock detects movement, and you hope it’s KK and ED… but no such luck. It’s 2nd Officer Ofadia who, according to your records, is something of a combustives expert. She’s a big, bulky indigo-blood, and she’s with two trolls in the uniform of the maintenance staff, one of whom tries the override code on the door console.

Eheheh, yeah right. Like you didn’t disable the manual override like a perigee ago.

The officer isn’t surprised when it doesn't work. She ejects something out of her sylladex, and your scanners pick up something small and high in cyclonite content.

What the fuck. What kind of psycho carries around plastic boomblocks inside an active spaceship?

They back up and brace for impact, and you activate your antisabotage defenses… ironically to defend against those trying to stop your sabotage. Compartments around your block open up, revealing a half-dozen mounted plasma guns, all pointing at the door and waiting.

The explosion rocks your nearby camera, and your connection to the door in question abruptly cuts out. On screen, you see the door losing its grip, and the trolls are able to pry it open.

Only to get a faceful of plasma blasts. The first maintenance guy is slammed back against the hallway wall.

Ofadia rolls in and behind your column, throwing some sort of grenade up at the nearest gun. It detonates, and you lose connection with that gun as it bursts apart. You also feel the unnerving sensation of the concussion causing a brief static in the nearby biowires.

The other maintenance guy has pulled a massive shield out of his specibus, and is ducking behind it as he waddles in. You pummel the shield with rifle blasts, but he’s hunched in like a shellbeast.

“I thought you said this looked like helm sabotage!” Ofadia shouts over the blasts. She’s ducked against the back of your column. Two of your rifles are trained on her, but she’s too close to your wires to risk the shot.

The first maintenance guy you shot pokes his head in, only to duck out again at the volley of blasts you send his way. “It does!”

“I don’t see anyone else in here!”

The one with the shield has moved over to one of the panels in the helmsblock that monitors your biosigns. Still tucked under his shield, he boots it up, and you realize what a scrambled mess the data must be at this point. “It’s the helmsman!” He shouts. “The helmsman itself is malfunctioning!”

Asshole.

Somewhere in your system, your proximity sensors let you know that another ship has drawn even with your own, and is attempting to activate your airlock. You let them through.

Ofadia seems to be catching on that you’re not going to shoot at the column, so she hugs it as she moves around. She pulls another boomblock out of her sylladex, and you really do not like her that close to your wires with that thing. You stop shooting altogether, just in case a stray charge sets it off or something.

“Someone’s watching us all right.” She looks around and finds your helmsblock camera. “You see this?” She tosses the explosive between her hands, now standing right in front of your column. “Whatever you did to the ship, you better reverse it or I’m taking the whole system down.”

She’s holding that thing like two feet in front of you, and you have never wished for your hands harder than you do now. Or your telekinesis to not be harnessed to the fucking ship. No, instead, you’re completely helpless in front of a psycho who brought _explosives_ onto a _spaceship_.

“It’s not working!” says the maintenance guy. “It’s going even more haywire… biosigns spiking, speed of processing increasing.” He pauses, then looks up. “If I didn’t know better…”

“ _What_ , lowblood?”

“…I’d say it knew we were here.”

Slowly, she turns and stares at you. 

Fuck it.

You keep a metaphysical grip on your system and dip into your biological frame, and find yourself staring two inches down into dark blue eyes.

“Get that shit,” you rasp sharply, “out of my face.”

The officer recoils, stumbling back two steps, and you take the shot, the two plasma rifles behind you blasting her back even farther. The boomblock explodes in her face, rocking your entire helmsblock, and you gasp as your nearest biowires start returning static.

Your grip on your system slips a bit, suddenly feeling more tenuous as you fight a rush of static. Oh shit.

Through your rising panic, you register the officer stretched out on the floor in front of you, and one of the maintenance workers hunched over her. You’re more distracted by the other one, who’s now frantically trying to use the console to dip into your coding. To do what? To try to shut you down from the inside? Fuck no!

You clamber your way back into the system and shut down the little stream of coding he’s trying to enter before it even starts. What even is that? A virus? Please, you wrote better viruses when you were six!

Actually…

You throw together a quick code of your own… it’s a malicious little string of old logic that you perfected when you were still trolling viruses back and forth with KK. It overloads the panel and makes it combust, and the worker’s shield only magnifies the blast when it comes from inside it. He’s turned to so much olive-colored slime.

“Stop right there!” You turn your attention back to the last maintenance worker. He’s looking at you with wide orange eyes, a block of something high in glyceryl trinitrate in his hands. “You get back to your normal function or I’ll take us both out!”

You slither back into your body, just so you can give him an incredulous look. “Are you serious right now?” You voice is not above a whisper, but against the sudden silence, it echoes. 

“I mean it! S-stop malfunctioning right now!”

“Yeah, what part of this makes you think that will work?”

“…d-don’t kill me…”

You belatedly realize that all the remaining guns in your helmsblock are trained on him. 

“Just put the boomblock down and go, asshole.”

He slowly nods and sets the explosive right between the base of your column and Ofadia’s stirring body. Then, he starts backing quickly out of the room. Good survival instinct, at least. Not surprising for a lowblood who somehow managed to survive on a ship full of highbloods. 

Wait. His profile shows he’s cleaning staff… what’s he doing in a maintenance uniform?

You realize something is off just as he reaches the door and he looks back with a determined expression. You can feel the psychic energy suddenly pulse out of him as he reaches out and does something psionic to the block of nitro right below you.

Oh fuck.

And then suddenly things are going haywire. You sense warnings flashing through your system… damage reports, and biosign warnings, and static static static. You cling to the system processes, trying to pull them back into some semblance of order, but you feel like you’re scrabbling sideways up a slippery cliff face, unable to get a firm grip as you slip away. Your cameras start losing visual, and your control of your routines wobbles.

Somewhere, your lock-down on the doors releases, and any trolls who haven’t suffocated by now are released from their helmsblocks. 

Farther away, you feel something like pain, except that you’d forgotten what real physical pain felt like. Is this physical pain? Shit, did that asshole just kill you?

No, because you can still feel the code of your thoughts, and register the ringing in your biological ears. Over that ringing, you hear a rifle blast that wasn’t from one of yours, then a shout of “SOL!”

The idiot always did have awful timing.

You try to push back into your body to see them, but it _hurts_ , and you’re afraid you’ll lose track of the buzz of your internal system in emergency mode.

“What the fuck happened here?”

“I don’t know! It’s not usually like this!”

“No shit, Eridan.”

You blink your eyes, wishing you had a code that could clear up the after-image of the blast. It’s faint, but you can make out the shape of Eridan stumbling over bent metal and frayed wires toward you.

Huh. Frayed and snapped wires, most of them below your waist. Most of those are your life support. That’s… probably not a good thing.

A cool hand grabs your jaw, and violet eyes suddenly take up most of your returning vision. “Sol? You okay? What happened?”

“What does it look like happened, stupid?” you rasp, blinking to try to get a clearer look at him. Shit, he looks scared. You don’t like how scared he looks. “Fucking explosion.”

“Who the fuck,” KK snaps from nearby, “brings live explosives onto a fucking spaceship?”

You chuckle, though it sounds more like a staggered breath than an actual laugh. Fuck, speaking is hard. “I know, right?” You peek at him over ED’s shoulder, just in time to catch his red eyes looking away.

“Is Vriska on board yet?” KK asks, staring at Ofadia’s charred body. 

You… try to pull up the data, but you can’t seem to find it. It’s slipping away. Oh fuck, you’re losing your grip on the system. “I… think so?”

ED’s eyes get wider. “You're not sure?”

“I detected them activating the airlock a couple minutes ago… but then officer bitch and her minions came in and started blowing shit up. I think it disconnected something…I’m having difficulty keeping all my systems up.”

You flinch against the sensation of someone in another part of the ship blowing through the armory door.

“I lost control of the doors. I’m sorry.”

“Shut up,” ED snaps. “You did great.”

There’s the sound of running footsteps approaching, and both of your companions tense and turn toward the doorway. (You, of course, hang there limply, though you can at least aim your helmsblock defenses toward the opening).

A group of trolls comes into view, and only the presence of a very distinctive blue feline cap stops you from firing.

Nepeta launches herself at Karkat with a joyous squeal, wrapping herself around him.

“I see you didn’t stay in bed like we told you to,” Karkat says flatly, with no hint of surprise.

The half-dozen resistance soldiers part, and Kanaya steps gracefully out. “I attempted to enforce your wishes, but she… what’s the phrase… stowed away?”

Nepeta turns and sticks a tongue out at Kanaya, and you spot a wrapping of white bandages around her middle.

Nepeta is as dainty as she’s ever been, but she certainly isn’t delicate. Even injured, she’s grown into a swift surety of movement, like an acrobat. She’s wearing the same grey-and-red uniform as KK and the rest of the soldiers, except for that blue cat cap that, as far as you can tell, is the exact same one she had five sweeps ago.

Kanaya, meanwhile, is all tall, lean grace. She’s paler than any troll you’ve ever seen, and you’re forced to give some credibility to Eridan’s stories of her rising up as a rainbow drinker. She’s eschewed the red and grey uniform for a gown of jade and black.

She, you realize, is eyeing you and Eridan, and Eridan is suddenly as tense as a wriggler up for culling. You wonder what the fuck happened between them to make him so terrified of her.

You do your best to cast her a wry smile. “Hey KA.”

“Sollux,” she says cordially. Then, less cordially, “Eridan.”

“Uh, heeeey Kan….”

She turns her attention back to Karkat. “Vriska said she intended to herd the officers back to the bridge. I suggest you meet her there, before she makes too much a mess of things.”

Karkat nods while extracting himself from Nepeta’s grip. To Eridan he says, “You staying here?”

“A' course.”

“And I will remain with him,” says Kanaya.

KK fixes a stern look on her. “I figured. Remember what we agreed.”

“Yes. Not unless he deserves it.”

ED mumbles, “Oh god…”

Karkat waves at the soldiers, and they move out, with he and Nepeta following behind them. You try to follow their progress with your cameras but your connection blanks out two hallways down.

While in your system, you feel the tickle of a new ship scanning over yours, and realize that another small ship just came out of hyperspace nearby.

You’re pulled away from that by action on the bridge, which you find you do still have a working connection to. Your camera catches Vriska, decked out in a long jacket and wide-brimmed hat, striding in with a handful of followers in tow (one of which bears a familiar set of gigantic up-curved horns, though you're not quite sure how Tavros is walking when last you knew he was paralyzed from the waist down). She’s cornered First Mate Swenny and a couple of his soldiers, as she slowly draws her saber.

Then, you’re pulled away from that by some fishy idiot patting your face. “Sol, come on, stay with us.”

“I’m not passing out, dumbass. I’m trying to concentrate.”

“Oh.”

“On what,” asks Kanaya, “precisely?” She sidles up to Eridan, looking calm and in control. It’s actually really soothing.

“VK’s on the bridge with the first mate. Not sure where the other officers or KK is… I keep losing cameras.”

“I see.” She pulls some strips of cloth out of her sylladex and begins wrapping them around your waist, and you wonder what happened to you that requires bandaging. “Is there anyone else we should worry about?”

“I can’t tell. Blast fucked up my connection to my system, except…” What the fuck, who just blew open the door into the life support rooms? “There’s another ship nearby that just hopped into normal space. Is it one of yours?”

At that, Kanaya frowns. “Not that I know of.” She touches something on her wrist, and you feel the tickle of a short-wave communication device against your internal sensors. “GA to AG… am I doing that correctly?”

“Yeah, Fussyfangs, you’re fine. What? I’m kinda busy here.”

“Sollux has detected an unidentified ship nearby. Are we expecting any more company?”

“Hell no. If it’s unidentified, why don’t you have him identify it?”

Kanaya glances up at you, and you give it a shot. You even get so far as putting the command into your external scanners, but your connection fuzzes out before the process is complete.

“Shit.”

“It seems that is out of the question at the moment.”

“Wait, _what_? Why is that out of the question?”

“The helmsblock has sustained some damage from what appears to be some sort of explosion. He is having difficulty keeping connected to his system.”

“What the fuck? Who damaged my new ship? Why didn’t anyone mention this before?!”

Eridan snaps into Kanaya’s wrist. “Not all of us have communication devices, you know!”

“Whatever.” Vriska’s voice is punctuated by a scream, and you check back on the bridge to see that she just cut the first mate’s head off. “Can I at least get a visual of the new ship or something?”

You feel your body nod, even as you’re fighting through the static and noise of error messages to pull the feed from the applicable external camera onto the screen.

It takes longer than it should, but you manage it, and everyone on the bridge (Vriska, her crew, and a newly arrived Karkat) bears witness to a small, sleek, bright red ship glistening in the starlight.

“Shiiiiiiiit,” Vriska breathes. 

“You know it?” Karkat snaps.

“Yeah. That,” she says, “is the Pyralspite.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“You’ll see in a second.”

A communication darts into your external channels, and your automatic process displays the request onscreen before you can even look at it.

“Let her through, Captor.”

You can do that. You patch the video feed through.

A brightly lit interior appears, populated by a single troll, seated in a pilot’s chair. A troll with red glasses, a dragon cane, and a sharp, victorious grin.

“Well, well, well. It’s a good day for justice.”


	27. Sollux: Descend

“Hello, Vigilant,” Vriska says darkly.

“…Terezi?” Karkat whispers.

“And who’s this delectable new face?” The troll onscreen takes a big sniff and then grins wide. “Why, Karkles, you smell so much more delicious than last time we talked. Your eyes really came in nicely!” She cackles. 

“Okay, what the fuck? Is this the perigee of old friends reappearing out of nowhere just to be assholes?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she says. “But I do know that I have a loooong list of crimes committed by a certain LadyLuck that makes it my moral imperative to take out her and anyone in cahoots with her.” Terezi leans toward the screen and lowers her voice, but keeps grinning. “You’re not… in cahoots with her, are you, Karkles?”

“Fuck no.”

“A likely story.” She leans back, tapping her cane against the ground thoughtfully. “Because it smells to me like I caught you both red-handed stealing imperial property and killing imperial soldiers. Some, redder of hand than others, eh Karkles?”

Vriska rolls her eye at that. “Oh puh-lease. Like you care about imperial property? You left the legislacerators, like, two sweeps ago.”

“She did what?” Karkat is looking increasingly confused.

“Left is… an unflattering way to put it,” Terezi says. “I prefer, blasted out in a trail of weeping matesprits.” She leans forward again. “And now, I don’t answer to anyone. Except _justice_.” In a sharp motion, she snaps her sword out of her cane and points it at the screen. “Which brings me back to you, dear _sister_.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Vriska snaps back. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I now have control of one of the most powerful warships of the empire!”

Terezi doesn’t lose her grin. “Maybe powerful once, but not anymore. Or didn’t you notice that it’s malfunctioning?”

“ _What did you do_?” Vriska hisses.

“Just a couple words in receptive ears. Nothing a psychic of your caliber can’t top, dear sister.”

“Wait, wait wait!” Karkat breaks in. “ _You_ had something to do with the explosion in the helmsblock?”

She cackles. 

“GOD DAMMIT, TEREZI! That’s SOLLUX down there!”

Her smile drops.

“Stop trying to reason with her!” Vriska snaps. “And someone get on the fucking gunports. I want her shot straight out of the timeline!”

Her crew hops to it, and you soon feel the concussions of your plasma canons blasting at the tiny red ship. Terezi’s window blinks out, though you’re not sure if it’s because she cut it, or because you lost grip on the feed.

You’re pulled back to your body to shouts and further plasma blasts, this time within your helmsblock. Nearby, you hear the rumble of Kanaya’s chainsaw.

You open your eyes to see ED and KA engaging in a battle with a half dozen armed soldiers, led by Lt. Iopret, who is bearing a pair of electrified whips.

You reach for you helmsblock defenses and take down two of the grunts with your wall-mounted plasma rifles before they know what hit them. One of them returns fire on your mounted rifles, however, and methodically starts shooting the guns off their mounts. ED gets a good shot in on him that makes him drop his gun, but not before he’s whittled you down to one remaining rifle. Then, one of the other soldiers smacks Eridan in the back with a hammer, and ED tumbles hard into your side.

Kanaya’s chainsaw roars as she faces down the lieutenant, but the officer is flicking out his whips in a steady rhythm that doesn’t let her get close. 

The soldier with the hammer swings down hard toward ED, who ducks out of the way at the last minute… which means the hammer smacks hard into the bottom part of your column. You hiss a curse as it jars some of your fraying cables loose.

Iopret freezes and spins a stare at you. “Did that thing just–” He cuts himself off in time to duck Kanaya’s chainsaw. Then, he sprints around behind you, into range of your last gun, and you happily open fire. One of his whips snaps up and latches onto it, and the final wall-mounted rifle shorts out under 200 volts. 

While he’s distracted, Eridan takes a shot at his back, but fucking _misses_. Meanwhile, Kanaya turns to cut the legs out from under the hammer wielder. Literally.

Iopret spins with a sneer. “Somehow, I knew you’d turn on us, Dualface, just like you turned on the ) (eiress. A piece of shit like you doesn’t know what loyalty is!”

“Yeah, I do!” He raises Ahab’s Crosshairs to shoot again, but the other gunman has retrieved his weapon, and snipes it right out of his hands. “Hey!”

“Really?” Iopret sneers, stalking toward. “Then tell me, you waste of royal blood... What, exactly, are you loyal to?”

And, just for a second, Eridan looks at _you_.

God. Dammit. Eridan.

Iopret, not being a complete moron, picks up on it. He looks at you, and you realize a little too late that you’re looking back. Shit, you think as his eyes widen in realization, you’re both idiots.

“What the hell did you _do_?” Iopret shouts.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Kanaya’s chainsaw sputters as it cuts through the torso of another of the remaining soldiers.

Iopret gives Eridan a look of purest disgust, then flicks his whip upward, so that it wraps around a twisted bundle of your biowires. You can feel the static buzzing through the feed, right into you pan, and the skin around the affected wires prickles.

Eridan freezes, because he is completely shit at lying. 

“You know, I’m not even surprised. You’re such a sick fuck, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been pailing this sad shadow of a troll. Is that it, Private Ampora? You’ve been pailing a piece of _hardware_?”

“He’s not fuckin' hardware!”

“Oh really? Then doing this shouldn’t hurt it.”

He flips something on the handle of his whip, and approximately 800 volts pour into your d2lyZXMgb2ggZnVjayBvaGZ1Y2sydG9waWl0aHVydDIyaGlpdG9oZnVja29oZnVjaw

Everything twists and burns, your coding sssplitting and recombining every which way, mixed with sensations you can’t intinterpret because they’re too technical or too biological or not enough of either. Your sysysystems overload, and you watch from outside your coding as, somewhere, the microphone on Camera 11 peaks22 as your body shrieks in agonagonagony.

“STOP IT!”

And then, cooler and over the rumble of an idling chainsaw, “Release your weapons immediately or perish.”

“And let go of my one advantage? I don’t think so.”

Another bolt zaps through your system, and you get tantangled up in the swirl of code. You try 00110010to find pppppp purpu purchase, but your processor is goinginginggoin67 haywire. 

“That’s something you never fucking understood, Ampora.”

Another bolt. You feel something importrtrtant short out. You think it might be one of the wiwiwi wires redirecting your psionics into the 222222ship.

“When you find your opponent’s weak point, you _fucking exploit it_.”

Another bolt. More shortortorting wires. You think you might still be screaming still be still be screa, ming, but it’s hard totell, because you’ve lost all feed from your cameras. Wait, then h hhhow are you hearing this?

Oh right. Your ears.

“And for whatever reason, this is yours. So bow, violetblood, because you are my fucking _bitch_.”

The roar of a chainsaw. A gasp.

The electricity stops, but the pain 26and glitching ccon continues. 

“Kan… you…”

“Did what you could not. I understand.”

“I…Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

The tinny sound of Vriska’s voice suddenly roars through Kanaya’s communicator. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON DOWN THERE? Why did the ship stop moving, and what the HELL is up with the lights? ”

“Fuck, SOL!”

Footsteps, and that cool pressure agai a against your cheek. It sooths your spinning head. Spinning processor. You don’t know. Wwhat…

“Sol! Oh god, Sol, please tell me you’re okay!”

You open your eyes (when did you close them?), and your ppp pan is assaulted by a jumble of datatatata it isn’t sure how to process. Colors, light, motion… #6A006A….

“I’m afraid we were forced to engage in a strife in the helmsblock. The helmscolumn appears to have sustained considerable damage.”

“Sol, come on! Oh god oh god….”

“I can’t steal a ship that can’t move, Kanaya! And in case you couldn’t tell, WE’RE UNDER FIRE HERE!!!!!!!!”

The image coalesces, and you’re not sss222ure if you’re reading it through data or through the actual ocular part of your pan, but it’s dedefeffffinitely a violet-haired prick in front of you, and he’s definitely crying.

The lights are fliflickering. Everything is flickering. Because youyo you’re flickering… your power fizzling ineffectually through the fray eded, burned out cords. You can’t reach anyany of it anymore… completely blinddeafmute…

It takes you a second 222 remember how to speak. “Holy shit, ED… Don’t be so dramatic...”

He ducks and presses his head into your shoulder, releasing strange br breaths into your helm2man uniforrm, and it takes you a moment to realize that he’s sobbing. What. The ffuck.

You are way too disorie nted for this.

“…way to fix it?!” Vriska is snapping through Kanaya’s communicator.

You turn your head and can see Kanaya looking up at the top of your column, her chainsaw still out and c out and out and coated in a rainbow of blood colors. “I am not a mechanic, Vriska. Furthermore, I suspect this would be irreparable even if we did have one on hand.”

“Oh for the love of… you better have left whoever did that alive, because I totally want a piece of him!”

“Yes… there are indeed two pieces of him left. I suppose I could give you one.”

“Noooooooot what I meant, Kanaya!”

“-OH FOR-“ “Hey!!!!!!!!” There’s the sound of a fight on the other end of the line. You trtr try to reach up through your system to see the bridge but… it huruhh hurts. Evv v verything huu urts. Your bobbo body, your head, your code 65 72 72 6f 72 … how can code hurt?

“KANAYA.” That’s KK, you’re pretty sure. “Is Sollux okay?”

She turns to look at you, and you blink back. “He is …awake.”

“Good. We’re moving to Plan B.”

“And what is that, precisely?”

“Same thing it always is… get the fuck out.”

“I see.” You really don’t like the wway she’s looking up at your wires.

“KA….”

“It will be all right,” she says most confidently, and hefts her chainsaw. Suddenly, her presence is not the least bit s00thing.

ED’s grip on you tightens, and you roll your head back to look down at him. Big violet eyes meet your own, and you can only hopnly hope that you only look a fraction as terrified as he does.

He swallows thickly. “Sol…”

“Yeah, that’s me, dumbass,” you whisper back. Fuck, this could very well be the last time you talk to him. Because something’s bound to go wrong. Something always goes wrong. You’re fuckfuckuuf fucked up in all the worst wwways, and you’re part machine, except you’re about to lose the machine part, and you just _know_ this is the last astchachance you’ll get to speak to anyone, and it’s to fucking _Eridan_ , and why is that kind of okay and why is there so much that you want to _say_ , and why yy y aren’t you _saying_ it and-

Oh fuck. Kanaya’s chainsaw just kicked into gear. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck 011010010110100101101101 001100100110001101100001011100100110010101100100

“Shhh, it’s okay.” Eridan's voice is wavering, but low and calm, and you feel a pap against your cheek. You do your best to fofo focus on that, especially as you feel the jarring sensation of the first wire being snapped apart. “I’m scared too, but I promise we’ll make sure you get out a' this.”

One by one, you are losing your connections to your sysystem. It’s all coming undone, your thoughts scattering and sharpening and fuzzzzzing and flying awayy and… and… where’s your code… oh god you’re losing your code…

“ED,” and you sound like you’re crying. Aare you crying? Fuck, you’ve never been this terrified. Not that you’ll die, but that you’ll _live_. “I don’t want to be a shell again. Please don’t let me live like that.” And he fucking _hesitates_ , and now you know you’re sobbing, because you know ED won’t have the globes totwo kill you if it comes to that. “You fucker. You _promised_.”

You’re losing track of the conversation. Everything’s float ing, and where was…. what…. no, hold onto this. You hav e to _focus_. This is _important_.

“And I’ll keep it,” he says (his name, you have his n ame in your memory banks, where are they where are all your ports they’re all gone where…) “I promise you won’t be a burden, Sol. Whatever happens.”

“God damn it.” Why are you crying? You don’t remember. You only know that you’re so ffucking scared, and he’s an asshole and, “I hate you so fucking much,” except you can’t remember if you mean that anymore.

He just nods and presses his forehead into your own, and you close your eyes and listen to the roar of a chainsaw (who has a chainsaw? wh y?) and let his cool, steady presence wrap around you as y  
ou slip

slow ly

aw  
a

 

y

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now [fanart for this chapter](http://swifty-fox.tumblr.com/post/77406338681/come-apart-falling-in-the-cracks-of-every), by Rachel at <http://swifty-fox.tumblr.com>!


	28. ??????: Dream

Cool. Bumpy.

Loud.

Dark. ShakingLoud. Fast toofast. Colors. Light. 

LOUDLOUDLOUDLOUD.

quiet

Cool. Quiet. Cozy. Voice. Warm.

Safe.

Sopor… You know sopor. Warm and wet. You are in sopor.

A voice, through the sopor. Soft. Safe.

You turn and find the coon opening, and look, and see violet.

Sitting against your coon. Violet hair and clothes and thing… in… uh… you don’t have the words.

You reach an arm (no hand?) out the touch the violet, and the voice stops. This makes you unhappy- 

_Oh_. Violet _eyes_.

The voice starts again, faster and louder, and you want it to go back to the slow and soft, but you don’t know how to do that. You don’t like loud and fast, so you try to abscond.

A hand. Cool. Voice soft again. Shoosh shoosh. Safe.

Violet. Safe.

000000000000000000000000000

You are sick. 

Hard to move, everything heavy, weak weak weak.

Violet makes you eat. It sits ugly and painful, and then you’re sick.

Hurts all over, especially shoulders and head. Sopor helps.

You spend a lot of time in sopor.

000000000000000000000000000

You are dreaming.

Everything jumps and happens in ways you can’t follow, so you let it roll over you. The voice weaves through the dreamstate, low and soft and always. He reads to you, and you think you might almost remember the words.

You are dreaming even though you’re not asleep.

000000000000000000000000000

Another comes. Red and grey and black and red.

Your head is on Violet’s lap, his hand running through your hair. The hand says Don’t be scared.

Why would you be scared? Red wouldn’t hurt a bee.

He looks at you and he looks tired.

Red and Violet talk, their words winding around one another in the air above you. You close your eyes and follow them with your mind, picking apart the sounds, searching for something, except you’re not sure what you’re searching for. You’ll know when you find it, and it will wake you up again.

Red moves and you open your eyes to see he’s leaving. You don’t want him to leave yet, so you reach out and grab him. Not with your hands, because you don’t have those anymore. With the other thing. The thing you almost forgot about, except you forgot when you forgot it.

You reach out and pull Red back and drop him to sit next to you. Violet laughs and Red grumbles and it makes you happy. You think you must be having a good dream.

000000000000000000000000000

Sometimes, Violet leaves. You don’t know why or where, but he goes, and you don’t like it.

Others come. 

Pink comes, and she talks to you like Violet does, except what she talks about makes her sad. You don’t like when she’s sad.

Green comes, and she brushes your hair and cleans your face and braids and clips up the dead wires that come out of the back of your head. You’re not sure why you have wires coming out of the back of your head, but you know they’re supposed to be there, just like your horns and nose and knees (but not hands and feet, because those aren’t there).

She sings to you sometimes, and it’s calming, so you let her fuss over you. 

Other Green comes too. She tries to play games with you, like Hide the Marble and Matching, but you can’t concentrate and so you do poorly at them. This makes you frustrated, because they’re _hard_ and they’re not supposed to be _hard_ , and if you could just wake up you’d be able to do them.

One time, you get so frustrated that you start throwing things at her with your mind. She leaves and you keep throwing things around, and then Violet comes in and it’s okay, it’s okay, shhhh, don’t cry.

You feel terrible, because you didn’t mean to get mad at Other Green, and you want to tell her you’re sorry for throwing things at her, except you don’t have the _words_ , and that just makes you feel even worse.

Violet doesn’t leave again for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is [fanart for this chapter](http://capturingsol.tumblr.com/post/70508549486/so-i-did-an-art-based-off-the-latest-chapter), by capturingsol at capturingsol.tumblr.com!


	29. Sollux: Rise Up

You wake up.

You blink to find that your eyes are already open. You’re sitting on a metal table, a pair of blue eyes _way_ too close to your own. It’s Equius, and he’s twisting his head to look at you from multiple angles, as if you’re one of his robots under inspection.

“Can you, like, back up, EQ? I can smell your sweat and that’s terrible.”

At your words, there is a rush of movement in the room around you, and you realize you’re not alone. You turn your head (ow, headache), to see that the small room (which appears to be some sort of medical block, except it’s covered in robot parts) is filled with people. KK, and ED, and AA, and FF, and KA and NP and TV, and VK near the door…

And they’re all looking at you with different degrees of excitement. It’s a lot more attention than you’ve had in pretty much ever.

“What?” you mumble uncomfortably.

Feferi breaks the stillness first, giving a high-pitched squeal and launching herself into you for an exuberant hug. You sway under the force of it, wincing against your headache, but nonetheless bring your hands up to pat at her back.

Wait.

Your hands?

You stare down at them, feeling your processor absorb the data of the metallic shine and mechanical joints at the end of your wrists, at the same time logging the fact that you can totally feel the soft fuzz of Feferi’s shirt through them.

Your processor? 

Feferi pulls back, and you’re kind of grateful for that, because what the fuck. You flex your hands in front of you, feeling the gears turning inside them. You press them to the table, and you can feel the cold metal underneath the equally cold metal of your hands. Sensors. They have touch sensors in them, which your pan is somehow decoding.

Because it’s totally decoding. You can feel the binary up and running again. Thinner than before, and missing most of the routines you’re used to, but definitely there.

Slowly, you bring a hand up to your head. Most of the wires are gone, except a few small ones still emerging from your temples, and the big one at the base of your skull. You guess it was pretty much unavoidable that the wires in your pan would have to stay there. You doubt the best brain surgeoneutralizer in the universe could have removed them safely. 

The remaining wires have been braided together close to your head, under your hair. You run your hands over the bumps of wiring, following the knots up to your horns. There, at the bases of your horns on either side of your head, the wires lead into little devices attached there, inside metallic casings and about the size of your thumb. With you new hands, you inspect the one nestled against the base of your right horns. It's boxy, and you can feel the soft buzzing of electronics within it. The wires leading into it are like legs, and the tiny, paper-thin transmitters feel like wings. A check on your other set of horns reveals its twin on the other side.

“Bees? You shaped them like bees?” You grin at the thought.

“Megido’s idea,” Equius says, looking pleased himself.

You run both your hands over the wire braids, feeling the data flowing through them, clear and strong. They made you a pair of portable processors, and shaped them like _bees_. This is the best thing ever. You turn your grin to Aradia, who smiles back in her own way. Maybe she knows what it’s like not to be whole without all your components.

“Speaking of which,” KK drawls, crossing his arms and trying his best to look sour through his obvious relief. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell anyone you made a back-up of yourself and hitched it to Aradia?”

You shrug, grinning sheepishly, and drop your new robotic hands back to the table. “It didn’t come up?”

He throws his hands in the air. “It honestly amazes me that you are as intact as you are, because you just don’t seem to give a shit at _all_! It’s like the rest of us have to have your self-preservation instinct for you, because fuck knows you don’t!”

You take another look around, your mood falling as you realize that all these people look so happy right now because they’d been _worried_ about you. Shit. “Sorry. And thank you. This is…” You flex your hands, marveling that that is a thing you can do again, “…kind of really amazing. Thank you.”

You turn to Equius, who nods. Feferi and Nepeta look like they’re both about to burst into tears, and… wait, where’d Eridan go? You could have sworn he was just here.

“So,” Vriska says from beside the door. “That’s it? Freak show’s over and we can get back to avoiding Pyrope now?”

“Yes,” Equius says. “I will need to run a few calibrations. It would be best if all of you leave.”

Vriska nods and ducks out with little more than that. Nepeta, Kanaya, and Feferi each give you a hug before they go, which makes you feel all sorts of awkward, (though somehow still not as awkward as Tavros when he offers a handshake). Saying you're not used to being touched is an understatement.

KK stays, and even hops up to sit on the table beside you, even as EQ bends down in front of you and starts handling the new additions attached to your wrists. The blueblood starts tapping them with some sort of lightly charged pick, making your hands twitch. He seems satisfied with what he’s seeing.

“So, asshole,” Karkat starts, but pauses. He’s looking down at his boots instead of at you.

“Just spit it out, KK.” Equius switches hands, his grip too tight (STRONG, you guess) for your flesh but fine on the metal. 

“I just wanted to make sure you’re really okay. I guess.”

It makes you smile, how awkward he still is about how much he gives a shit. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

He shoots you an annoyed look, and you chuckle. 

“Okay, better than.” You kick your feet, because you can. “Better than I’ve felt in sweeps.”

“Okay, good.” He sighs. “Good.”

“KK.”

“I missed you, you bulgebiting pussdrinker,” he snaps, turning to give you the full force of his red eyes. “You scared the shit out of all of us, okay? You really weren’t kidding when you said taking you down would fuck you up.” Then, more quietly. “For a while there, I thought it would have been more merciful to just kill you, until Aradia boarded and told us she had your back-ups.” Then, more angrily again. “Seriously, how could you be so stupid that you didn't tell anyone about that?”

Equius rumbles something that might be agreement as he kneels down to start poking at your new feet. Aradia remains a silent presence against the wall.

“Sorry… I really didn’t think of it at the time. I was a little fucked up during the whole break-out, remember?”

He winces. “Yeah. And then after that… fucking hell.”

“How long was I… like that?”

“A little over two weeks.”

“Two w- what the fuck took so long?”

Equius sharply twists one of your toes and you yelp. You turn an annoyed look down at him. “Your touch sensors appear to be functioning correctly,” the blueblood deadpans.

Karkat snaps, “Are you kidding me? First, we had to find a time and place to pick up an Empire-loyal mechanic and his robot assistant with a known pirate vessel, and that was a feat that required both impossible genius and incredible luck all on its own.”

“Sure, KK.”

“But after that, we had to build you a pair of fucking computers. I’ll have you know I had to code for three nights straight just to make them accept Aradia’s data at all.”

Well, now you feel like an asshole.

Karkat’s still going, too. “You’d think between myself, a robotics expert, and a _gog damned robot_ , we’d be able to figure out how to make a computer the size of a coin interface with a few biowires, but fuck no. Apparently either we are all terrible at technology, or your pan is just exceptionally fucked up.”

Equius stands, interrupting what was doubtless going to be a pretty spectacular rant. “Speaking of which, have you run a diagnostic yet? How are your internals running?”

“One sec.” You pull up an old diagnostic program and run it, wincing at all the glitching and blank spots it returns on the new processors. It spits back a bunch of numbers you’re not sure what to do with. “Shit, I think I need to recalibrate. The old programs are barely compatible.”

“Make sure you do so within the next two days, as I will have to return to my regular post after that.”

Karkat’s attention turns around. “You’re going back to the Empire so soon?”

Equius takes a towel from a nearby stack and uses it to wipe his hands. “Yes. It would be unwise to linger here longer than necessary. Megido and I will be departing via shuttle in approximately 50 hours.”

KK’s eyes narrow, and he suddenly looks like the hardened resistance leader he was when you first picked him up. “So help me, if you tell _anyone anything_ , I will make your life a living nightmare.”

He nods. “Fear not. I’ve no intention of giving any information that might harm my moirail… or her matesprit.”

KK settles back into grumpy wriggler mode. “Well, good.”

Equius nods to you. “Keep me posted, Captor.” Then, he tosses the towel over his shoulder and heads out. Aradia follows silently behind, but you catch a fleeting flicker in one of her eyes that you understand as a secret wink.

Heh.

You know, you owe Aradia a lot, and she's gotten pretty cool. You make a mental note to actually sit down and catch up with her in the next couple nights. It's been way too long since you've hung out with Aradia.

KK sighs, and you turn your smirk to him. “So. Nepeta’s matesprit, huh?” 

“Shut up.”

“I have to know… just how ‘acrobatic’ is she?”

“Oh my god we are not talking about this.”

“Because I have to say, KK, my cameras used to pick up some impressive feats of agility–”

He smacks you in the face with a towel, and you laugh. And holy shit, does it feel good to laugh. You laugh harder as he continues to pummel you, even as you reach out with your psionics (and thank god those don’t seem to be burned out!), grab the entire towel pile, and promptly bury KK in a mound of fluffy white doom to a round of creative, overly long curses.

You’re still snickering as he manages to extricate himself.

Once he's calmed down, you ask, “So, where are we right now?” 

“Fortune’s Fucking Favor.”

“I’m pretty sure Vriska’s flagship doesn’t have the expletive in its name… but good use of alliteration.”

“How are you back to normal for like five minutes, and you’re already being a smug asshole?”

“Uh, because I’m back to normal?”

He snorts, and you count a point of victory to yourself. 

“So," you ask, "is Vriska part of your movement now or what?”

“I have no fucking clue. She’s happy enough to ferry us around… and I swear she’s been making eyes at Kanaya, and that’s just too horrifying for thought.”

“Didn’t they used to be moirails?”

“Yeah, when we were _six_.”

You shrug. “What about everyone else? Was that Terezi I saw, or did I dream that?”

He sighs hard. “No, that was definitely Pyrope.” You give him a curious look, and he throws his hands in the air. “I don’t even know. She’s apparently a vigilante justicier now, and has been doing something vaguely black with Vriska for like two sweeps? It’s so fucked up that it’s absolutely perfect for those two. 

"Meanwhile, Feferi wants to join the cause, but seems to be under the impression that we’ll _cuddle_ the Condesce into not being a raving bitch, and who even knows what’s going through Ampora’s pan about any of it, because last I heard he was perfectly okay keeping the caste system as-is, except for the part where it threatened the life of his former flush-crush.”

“Speaking of fishface, where is he?”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “How the fuck should I know?”

“He was just here, right?” Ah, and now you can feel your mood dropping. Didn’t miss the mood swings, when you were a computer. “Why’d he leave?”

And then KK’s giving you that perceptive look he has, like he knows what’s wrong better than you do. You used to hate that look, when you were little. “What, exactly, do you remember about the last couple weeks?”

You have to slow down your functions to consider the question properly instead of simply continuing to spiral into panic mode. “Not much. It’s like a dream, I guess? I can remember snippets and sensations, but it’s all confused and out of context.” The table clacks loudly as you tap your metal fingers against it. “But I know ED was there… like, constantly. Fuck.” Your headache spikes, and you find your head in your hands. “That’s why he left isn’t it? He’s sick of me. Shit, I knew I’d be nothing but a burden. I _warned_ him, but he was too much of a fucking _coward_ to–”

“Hey, Sollux! Hey!” A warm hand falls on your shoulder, and you shrug it off sharply. “Come on, stop it. Trust me, that’s not it at all.”

“How the fuck would you know?! Fuck off, you don’t know anything!”

“The hell I don’t! Shit, if I’d known you reciprocated this hard, I would have mentioned it sooner!”

That pulls you out of your downward spiral so sharply that you get mental whiplash. “Wait, what?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and when you don’t immediately try to punch him with your new super strong robot hand, he relaxes, and even smiles a little. “He’s pale for you, dumbass.”

What.

“Pale?”

“Yep. White as a whale, seeing nothing but diamonds, shooshing and papping pale.”

“Uh, KK? You know you’re talking about Eridan, right? The guy who may or may not still want to cull all landdwellers?”

“Yeah, trust me, I know.” He rolls his head back. “It’s why it took me so fucking long to figure out what, exactly, was going on. But no, after watching him take care of you, yeah. It’s pretty much undeniable how sickeningly pale he is.”

You… try to run the calculations, to see if there’s some way to somehow crunch the data and reach a similar conclusion… but you’re distracted by this weird little flutter in your abdomen. “Sickeningly so, huh?”

“It’s absolutely putrid,” he says warmly. “And I am going to personally shove you both out an airlock if you don’t go find him right now and get this shit sorted out. Because I can’t seriously take him fucking pining one more night.”

You give him a smile and push off from the table. You wobble for a second, before your pan runs the calculations and pulls up the data on how walking works. You’re going to need to set a routine for it later, but for now, you have more important things to do.


	30. Sollux: Seek the Highblood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read this story and enjoyed it, especially you wonderful folks who have been leaving comments and kudos. Have a fluffy (but still snarky, because this is Sollux) final chapter to make up for... everything before this. Thank you for reading! <3

You find that one of the nice perks of having a wireless transmitter directly connected to your thinkpan is that you can connect to the ship's network while you walk, downloading the ship's layout and hacking into its passenger tracking program, even as you move toward ED.

It's kind of weird moving of your own volition. You have to program on the fly, building processes to crunch the numbers for balance and limb coordination. It doesn’t help that your processors aren’t really as efficient as they could be. 

They’re not bad, considering they were built by someone who’s generally better at building bots than motherboards and then partially coded by _Karkat_ … but honestly? You could do better. You’ll need to set aside time to sit down and tinker with them. Still, what you’ve got is a good place to start, and you’re still pretty much completely elated that you’ve got something up and working at all. 

Even so, your occasional teetering into the walls seems to be more out of physical weakness than poor coding. Your biological parts are creaky and shaky, because two weeks in sopor are no reasonable match for five sweeps as a motionless meat puppet. 

It's also weird to be surrounded by the metal walls of a ship and not have them be _you_. You can feel the weight of the ship around you and hear the humming of its network against your transmitters. You know that somewhere at the center of that network is another troll... one who's just like you were, but who hasn't woken up. You wonder if anyone misses him. You wonder if there's a way to power the ship without the helmsman, so you can wake him up, along with all others like him.

But those are all thoughts for another time. Right now, you're going fishing.

The Fortune's Favor tracks the locations of all its passengers and crew just like you did. You hack into the program and locate your tracker near the back of the ship, heading out of what you correctly deduced was a medical bay. A scan tells you that Eridan is currently located in the starboard respite compartments. You chart the most efficient route on the map you downloaded and head there.

When you reach the block, Eridan is frantically collecting everything from around the compartment and throwing it into his sylladex with no concern for how his fetch modus will sort them. As you stand in the doorway, he's clearing off his desk. You do a quick check of the ship's navigation log, but it doesn't look like you'll be stopping anywhere for a few nights.

"Are you seriously packing right now?" He jumps, and a pair of ink-based writing utensils shoot across the room as a result of being ejected mid-captchalogue. "Where the fuck do you think you're going to go when the ship's mid-transit?"

One of the utensils embeds into the wall, into a hanging map of Alternia's oceans. The decoration looks vaguely familiar—the entire block does—and it takes you a minute to realize that you've been in here before. In fact, you were in here pretty much the entirety of your recuperation.

The dumbass took care of you in his own block.

ED stares at the utensil embedded in the map for several seconds (Your computer half starts silently ticking them, but you cut that short, because come on. Priorities). Then, he turns to you, his usually expressive face closed off and still. It's a little unnerving to not actually be able to tell what he's thinking. You're not sure if it's because your processing power is significantly decreased or because he's actually succeeding at hiding his thoughts, as implausible as that is.

You lean on the jamb. "What?"

"Do you need somethin', Sol?"

What is even with him right now? "Well since you asked, I'm pretty much wondering why you absconded the fuck out my operating block just now."

"Don't be ridiculous." He gives a disdainful sniff and turns to continue stuffing things into his sylladex, starting with the ocean map. "There was no abscondin' whatsoever."

"Yeah, no, not buying it."

"What do you want from me, Sol?" The map disappears into his sylladex, and the embedded writing utensil flies back across the block. You catch it mid-flight with your psionics, and it hangs, suspended in the middle of the room. "Eq obviously worked his middle sciences and got you back up an’ runnin'. No need for me to stick around for the epilogue when I already know how it ends, right?"

"You're comparing my identity issues with your wizard fiction again."

"I am not! It's just a fuckin' metaphor." He snaps the writing utensil out of the air and into his sylladex, and now you're starting to get annoyed.

"Okay, seriously? What crawled up your waste chute and died?"

"Why would you expect me to be anythin' else but my usual unlikeable self?" And now he's grabbing another poster. "It's not like you need my approval for anythin' now."

"Sorry for thinking you might be fucking happy for me?" You step into the compartment, wanting to at least get him to _look_ at you. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? Me out of the helmsblock and actually functional? Or were you really so happy to let me stay a drooling invalid for the rest of my life?"

"A' course not!" He stops packing so he can spin and _finally_ look at you. "Watchin’ you like that was even worse than seein' you in all the wires!"

"Okay, so what's the fucking problem?" You're a couple steps away from each other now. He's a little taller than you, though you suppose you could always just fly if that ever became an issue. "I'm here, awake and ambulatory. Tell me why this is bad."

"It's not."

"ED, how many times do I have to point what a shitty liar you are? Because now? You're lying shittily. Knock it off."

Aaaaand the pout makes an appearance. It's actually a good sign, because it means you're getting through that thick seadwelling skull of his. Slowly, he says, "You really want to know, don't you?"

"Uh, yeah? Trust me, if I didn't give a shit, I wouldn't have asked."

He looks away and doesn't answer, and a big, dramatic pause hangs between the two of you. You stand in the middle of the block with your arms crossed, bearing it. A command slipped remotely into the ship's network closes his compartment door, and his gaze briefly flickers over to it. 

Once you think the silence has lasted long enough, you say, "Seriously, Eridan. Are you going to spit it out, or do you need a pile?"

He turns bright violet. "W-well, that was a bit brazen a solicitation, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we passed the point of ‘solicitation’ sometime between you crying into my chest and me letting you pet my fucking hair."

And now he's even brighter violet. "Y-you remember that?"

"Kind of?" You shrug and look around for something to start piling, but half the room has been cleared out. Your sylladex is completely empty, so there's no help there. "Not in a lot of detail, but if there's one thing I do remember, it's a lot of violet." Aha, he’s got a bookshelf. It's lined with ridiculous books about magic and grand battles and other wriggler stuff. You telekinetically dump them all off the shelves and into a pile at the base. 

"Hey! Be careful!"

"Nah." You drop onto the top of the pile, settling in with the sound of shifting paper. It's actually a huge relief to get off your legs. It’s kind of pathetic that such a short walk tires you out, but you guess you'll just have to build your stamina back. Ugh.

He doesn't move right away, so you tilt your head to look at him. Yep, he's still staring at you. Not moving.

Shit, what if KK was wrong? He's usually not wrong about this sort of thing, but you guess even he might be stumped by the romantic quagmire that is Eridan Ampora. Shit, you probably look so stupid to him right now. This was a bad idea.

You turn back to stare at the wall and sigh. You should... just go. You're a fucking robot, kind of. Why would he want any part of that, seriously? As soon as you can find the strength, you're going to go limp your sorry ass back to Karkat and give him a good smack across his stupid nubby horns for convincing you to do this.

You feel the pile shift under you, and it takes you a moment to realize that it's because someone else just sat on it behind you. You don't move to look at him, weirdly afraid you might scare him off. (Though you do have to stop yourself from reaching for the Fortune's Folly camera feed, because you kind of also want to see his expression right now).

"Wow. I haven’t glubbed on a pile for… a long time. Not since Fef.”

“We landdwellers just call it ‘talking’.”

“I know what it’s called, Sol!” There isn’t any venom in his voice, and you hear him sigh and burrow into the pile a bit more. “Sorry. Here you are extendin’ the metaphorical peace baton, an’ I just snap at you like a wriggler.”

“Eh. Don’t really care. It’s kinda funny, actually.”

“Funny?!”

“Yeah, the shit you get all up in arms about? It’s pretty hilarious, dude.”

“This, comin’ from the fuckin’ master a’ ‘oh woe ith me, everything thuckth an’ ith doomed an’ I’m goin’ to run uth into a thtar now’.”

“’Boo hoo, I got so many feelin’s that I just got to wwrite it into my stupid wwizard stories, wwhich I’m kind of embarrassed about but actually really super into’.”

“’Now I’m happy, now I’m thad, now I’m happy, now I’m thad’.”

“’Wwhere I am just so super dramatic all the time that I like wwearin’ _capes_ ’.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that capes are awesome, and nothin’ you say will convince me otherwise.”

“Oh, so you’re saying you at some point got a stupid idea in your head and won’t listen to sense? I am so surprised that it’s causing a logic malfunction. Beep boop bleep.” 

You’re not quite sure why, but this makes both of you laugh, his loud and strong while you snicker into your hand. The pile shifts under you, and you tilt your head back to see him turning to look at you over the pile. His #6A006A eyes are within arm’s reach of your own.

“To be fair, Sol, I think my takin’ initiative worked out pretty damn well for you.”

You could say something about how "takin’ initiative" isn’t how you would phrase it… but it stalls halfway through processing. Instead, what comes out is a little smile and a, “Yeah, it really did.”

He seems startled by the bald admission, and then he looks away. “Well, I’m glad. That you came out of it okay, I mean.”

You return to staring at the wall in front of you. “But….?”

The pile shifts as he settles back into it. “But I just got to thinkin’ I guess.”

“See, there’s your problem. Leave the thinking to people who are qualified.”

“Rude.”

“Eheheh.”

“I got to thinkin’… what happens now?”

“Well, what did you expect to happen now?”

“I got to be honest, Sol. I didn’t really think we’d actually succeed.”

You snap your head back to look at him, and he gives you a sheepish expression. “Wait, what? So all that talk about ‘havin’ some fuckin’ hope’, you were just pulling words out of your waste chute?”

“Pretty much.”

You turn on the pile to face him more fully, propping yourself on your elbows to look down at him. “You have got to be fucking kidding me with this.”

He fucking _smirks_ , the asshole. “Well, I _hoped_ we’d get you out, right? But, I mean, everyone kept sayin’ that you were more likely to die or go crazy or whatever. Logically, expectin’ you to come out safe an' sane would a’ been stupid.”

“Since when are you logical?”

He sniffs and crosses his arms, but his utter failure to not smile ruins the effect. “I’ll have you know I am a tactician at heart.” 

“Bullshit.”

“ _The point is_ … now you’re a troll again—or at least close enough that it doesn’t matter—an’ it’s great. I mean, fuck Sol, you’re right here, laughin’ an’ insultin’ me, an’ it’s just so fuckin’ fantastic that...” he sniffles, and oh shit, is he tearing up? 

“Holy shit, ED. Are you fucking _moved_ by this?”

He grabs a book from the pile and drapes it over his face, then nods.

“Oh my god, you are such a drama queen.”

“Shut up.”

“You remember, like, two minutes ago? When we were talking about how you get worked up over the most hilarious things?”

“I said shut up.”

“Because this is that.”

He whips the book off his head and throws it at you. You deflect it with your psionics and drop it back onto the pile.

He says, “Are you sayin’ you’re not happy about it?”

“Well, yeah, of course I am. But you’re not me, and you’re obviously more emotional about this than I am.”

“I just…” He bows his head to stare at his hands. “…look it’s gonna sound stupid, okay?”

“So, not much different from everything else you say, then?” 

“I’m not goin’ to apologize for bein’ happy for you. ‘Cause I am. See, from the first time I saw you hangin’ there, it just hit me like a harpoon, you know? You looked so awful, nearly dead an’ all wrapped in wires, an’ I just… I was so lonely, an’ you were there, even more fuckin’ alone than me an’ for so long I couldn’t even imagine it.”

You can’t even snark back properly, because something thick seems to be lodged in your throat.

“An’ so when you started glitchin’, an’ the old you started breakin’ through more an’ more, I just… I wanted you to get better, Sol. I wanted to _fix_ you so fuckin’ bad.” He sighs. “A’ course, in the end, you mostly fixed yourself. You, an’ Eq, an’ Ara. You didn’t really need me at all.”

“That’s not true.” It bursts out of you, startling both of you, but you go with it. “It’s all because of you. You and your dumb ass refusing to listen to reason.” He looks up to meet your eyes. “You badgered and bullied your way into getting EQ to listen to you, and you completely refused to take my brainwashed bullshit about not feeling emotions or thinking or whatever. Through sheer virtue of your thick fucking skull, you did what no one else would have ever been able to do. So, yeah. I needed you.”

His eyes are getting wet again, but you don’t let him look away. “You really mean that?’

“Dumbass, you know I don’t do flattery. Of course I fucking mean it.”

He nods slowly, and he face falls. “Well, if you needed me then, you certainly don’t anymore.”

“Holy shit, Eridan¬–”

“No, _listen_.” He takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly, the waver in his voice nearing intolerable levels. “I can admit that I liked bein’ able to help you out an’ all, and you certainly needed someone takin’ care a’ you the last couple a’ weeks… but now look at you. You’re up an’ walkin’ an’ talkin’, an’ you got some cool robot extremities, an’ Kar an’ Fef an’ everyone are here too… so what need do you got a’ me? My part’s done.”

Wait. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t play dumb, Sol!” He sits up, getting tenser with every word he speaks. “You have all your old friends to reconnect with now, an’ I’m sure Kar can put you to good use hackin’ the Imperial database or somethin’. You can move on with your fuckin’ life an’ cast off whatever rapport we had like vestigial wriggler legs without losin’ a glub-damned thing!”

Fear hits you like an asteroid against your hull. “Do you want me to cast it off?” Oh shit oh shit oh shit…

“A’ COURSE NOT!” He picks up a book and throws it across the room. “This means more to me than anythin’! More than fuckin’ FLARPin’ or wizards or Fef…. well, maybe not Fef. BUT IT COMES REAL FUCKIN’ CLOSE!”

You can breathe again. “Okay.” You shift your weight to push yourself up and scoot across the pile.

“OKAY?! HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU JUST SAY OKAY WHE–” He cuts himself off as you wrap your arms around him from behind. He’s stiff and cool to the touch, and the position is totally awkward, given your face is pressed against his scapula.

“S-sol…?” His voice is now soft and shaky. He shifts, and you just tighten your hold. “Sol… w-what are you doin’?”

“Shooshing your ass,” you mumble into his spine. ”What does it look like?”

“Sh-shooshin’ my… Sol, are you…?” Oh god, he sounds so ridiculously lost. It’s really fucking adorable. 

You smirk and release him, and he lays back onto the pile so that you’re looking down at his confused frown. “Look, fishface. This is actually really easy. You don’t want this to end, and I don’t want this to end, so it’s not going to fucking end. You can stop freaking out about it for no reason.”

He blinks up at you, and you can see the barest flickers of… dare you say it… _hope_ in his eyes. “But you’re not all… messed up anymore.”

“For fuck’s sake, Eridan, do you even realize who you’re talking to? I may not be a ship or a babbling invalid right now, but that does not mean I’m not still all sorts of fucked up, just by virtue of me and my bifurcated mutant brain.” You put a finger pointedly in front of his nose. “And that’s to say nothing about the absolute shithive mess you are.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I conduct all a’ my affairs with dignity and passion.”

“And yet you’ve somehow alienated, like, everyone you ever knew, and you dive into things without considering the consequences, and let’s not even touch on those semi-genocidal tendencies you have.”

“Had! When I was six!”

“Exactly. You wanted to kill all landdwellers when you were six, Eridan. I’ve run the calculations, and I’m 99% certain that’s the complete opposite of stable.”

“I can’t help it if my highblood urges get the best a’ me! At least I don’t hear the voices a’ the dead!”

“ _Imminently_ dead, dumbass.”

“Right, because that’s so much better. Tell me, which one of us not too long ago threatened to drive into a black hole?”

“And your stupid ass wanted to go down with the ship.”

“Only because that ship was you!”

You… have no response for that. The words hang in the silent air, and things are suddenly awkward. You push away, returning to your side of the pile, and you hear him sigh.

“I’m gonna be honest, Sol. I find myself carin’ an awful lot for your wellbein’, and I know I’m not the best person to be judgin’ your emotional state or whatever.... but it’s pretty obvious this feelin’ ain’t leavin’ anytime soon. I… I want to be your moirail. There, I said it. I’m pale for you, Sol.”

Your bloodpusher is thrumming and your wires are buzzing. Hearing him say it is… _holy shit_.

“All that time I was with Fef… god I had it so wrong.” He’s started rambling a little, but it’s okay because you’re kind of having trouble trying to recall how to speak. “I always figured pale was just that… a weaker version of red, you know? But it isn’t. It’s like, pure fuckin’ pity, an’ trust, an’ protection, an’ guidance, an’ mutual basic emotional _necessity_. God, I finally understand what Fef was always tryin’ to tell me, and I owe her so many apologies for bein’ such a fuckin’ inexcusably terrible moirail all those sweeps.”

You chuckle, and he pauses to frown at you.

“You know, I’m really pourin’ out my collapsin’ an’ expandin’ bladder based aquatic vascular system here, Sol. It’s not real proper form to start laughin’ right now.”

“Yeah well…” You smile at him, and you have a feeling that your smile is ridiculously bright… like, vapid moron levels, but you don’t really care. “I somehow doubt talking about your ex-moirail to your new one is really ‘proper form’ either, dumbass.”

He blinks, staring at you for a moment. Then he gives a self-depreciating little laugh and turns to stare down at his hands. “Yeah, you maybe got a point there.” He taps the tips of his index fingers together uncertainly. “The point is, I never knew this quadrant could feel this strong. Because I’m real fuckin’ pale for you, Sol. I want so fuckin’ bad to be your moirail, so I can be there to protect you an’ fix you if you break again, but, me bein’ how I am, I just don’t know if I can do it right, you know?”

“Eh, good.”

“…Good?”

Then, he’s looking back at you with that hopey expression again. You’re still grinning. “Man, if I’m going to be in a moirallegiance, I don’t want any of that sweet and gooey ‘let’s talk about our feelings all the time’ crap. Hurts my teeth just thinking about it. We’ll do this our way. We’re both fucked up beyond all reason, so… you fuck with me, I fuck with you, and we look out for each other that way.”

“Like, both of us bein’ the volatile one a’ the relationship? Does it even work like that?”

You shrug. “Hell if I know. I’d say we could ask KK, but I have a feeling he’d just explode into a lecture about what an ‘utter and complete debasement of the entire concept of a quadrant system’ that is.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He glances at you and tentatively reaches out a fist. “So… moirails?”

You snort a laugh, because _seriously_? Being so skittish about a fist bump when you’ve both been doing far more pale things for weeks? He gives you a smile that tells you he knows _exactly_ how irritatingly cheesy he’s being and that he’s utterly unapologetic about it. You leave him hanging for a minute, but he keeps the fist out, his grin growing more and more smug until you finally give in and tap your knuckles against his.

“Yeah, moirails. Asshole.”

And you’re not entirely sure if this will stick, or if it’s a good idea, or if it even works like that, but, all things told, you don’t give a shit. You’re in a quadrant with Eridan Fucking Ampora, who found you as little more than a mind-wiped battery and dragged you kicking and screaming back to sanity. Eridan Ampora, who can cut through your bullshit like it’s second nature for him, and you his. Eridan Ampora, who is selfish and arrogant and stubborn and overdramatic and hemolitist and so incredibly stupid… but who deep, deep (deep deep deep) down, keeps a death grip on what he genuinely cares about, and is easily hurt, and in the end just wants someone to acknowledge his right to exist. And you want to do that: to acknowledge him and care for him and push him when he needs pushing and protect him when he needs protecting… 

And, even weirder, you trust him to do the same for you. You _trust_ him, so fucking much. You trust Eridan Fucking Ampora with your life and, more importantly, with your sanity.

Somehow, between the feeling of your bloodpusher and processor thrumming in unison and the sound of ED’s stifled laughter at your side, it finally clicks, and you suddenly understand everything. This was what you needed to make you complete. Not the biology, not the binary. Your moirail. Eridan was your final component.

For the first time in a lifetime of bifurcation, you feel well and truly whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Download the "While You Were Gone"](http://tindeck.com/listen/ltlf), the fansong based on this story by Anna of [articulatelycomposed](http://articulatelycomposed.tumblr.com/post/90811832360/heres-a-new-fansong-its-a-song-for-sparrows).


End file.
